Quickstarts Manager

A community plugin for the Red Hat OpenShift AI (RHOAI) Dashboard that lets users browse, deploy, and manage AI Quickstarts from the rh-ai-quickstart organization — directly from the dashboard UI.

What It Does

Each AI Quickstart is a standalone application (chatbot, RAG pipeline, model serving stack, etc.) living in its own GitHub repository, deployable via a Helm chart. This plugin provides:

• Catalog — Browse a curated list of available quickstarts with descriptions, prerequisites, and tags
• One-click deploy — Install a quickstart into any namespace the user has access to via Helm
• Status tracking — View Helm release status and auto-discovered Routes for deployed quickstarts
• Lifecycle management — Upgrade or remove deployed quickstarts

The plugin enforces one quickstart per namespace to avoid resource name collisions. When a namespace is selected:

• If nothing is deployed → the Catalog view is shown
• If a quickstart is deployed → the Status view is shown (with upgrade/remove actions and Route shortcuts)

How It Works

The plugin consists of a frontend (Module Federation remote loaded by the dashboard) and a BFF backend service (Express.js). The dashboard proxies /quickstarts-manager/api/* requests to the BFF, forwarding the user's Bearer token. The BFF:

1. Fetches the curated quickstart list from a configurable GitHub repository (quickstarts.yaml)
2. Fetches individual quickstart metadata (quickstart.yaml) from each quickstart's repo
3. Runs Helm CLI operations (install/upgrade/uninstall) using a temporary kubeconfig built from the forwarded token
4. Discovers OpenShift Routes in the target namespace to provide application shortcuts

This is the same pattern used by community-plugins-admin, minus the dashboard MODULE_FEDERATION_CONFIG patching (quickstarts are standalone apps, not dashboard plugins).

For Quickstart Authors

To have your quickstart featured in this plugin, add a quickstart.yaml metadata file to the root of your repository. See quickstart.yaml.template for the full spec and an annotated example.

The file declares:

• Identity (name, description, version)
• Helm chart location (OCI registry reference or path within the repo)
• Deployment scope (project or cluster)
• Required RBAC permissions
• Prerequisites (GPU, storage, etc.)

Then request inclusion by submitting a PR to add your quickstart to the curated registry.

Deploy This Plugin

On an Existing RHOAI Dashboard

Prerequisites: Helm, oc CLI access to the cluster, and access to the redhat-ods-applications namespace (typically requires cluster-admin).

1. Install the plugin

Install directly from the OCI registry:

helm install quickstarts-manager oci://quay.io/rh-ai-community-plugins/quickstarts-manager-chart \
  --version 0.1.0 \
  --namespace cp-quickstarts-manager \
  --create-namespace

Or from a local checkout:

helm install quickstarts-manager chart/ \
  --namespace cp-quickstarts-manager \
  --create-namespace

This creates Deployments and Services for both the frontend (Nginx serving remoteEntry.js) and the BFF (Node.js with Helm CLI). To deploy the frontend only, add --set bff.enabled=false.

2. Register with the RHOAI Dashboard

Retrieve the current Module Federation configuration, append the plugin entry, and apply it:

oc get configmap federation-config \
  -n redhat-ods-applications \
  -o jsonpath='{.data.module-federation-config\.json}' \
| python3 -c "
import json, sys
config = json.load(sys.stdin)
config.append({
  'name': 'quickstartsManager',
  'backend': {
    'remoteEntry': '/remoteEntry.js',
    'authorize': False,
    'tls': False,
    'service': {
      'name': 'quickstarts-manager',
      'namespace': 'cp-quickstarts-manager',
      'port': 8080
    }
  },
  'proxyService': [{
    'path': '/quickstarts-manager/api',
    'pathRewrite': '/api',
    'authorize': True,
    'tls': False,
    'service': {
      'name': 'quickstarts-manager-bff',
      'namespace': 'cp-quickstarts-manager',
      'port': 3000
    }
  }]
})
print(json.dumps(config))
" > /tmp/mf-config-extended.json

oc set env deployment/rhods-dashboard \
  -n redhat-ods-applications \
  "MODULE_FEDERATION_CONFIG=$(cat /tmp/mf-config-extended.json)"

New dashboard pods roll out automatically. After roughly two minutes, reload the dashboard to see the plugin.

3. Verify

oc set env deployment/rhods-dashboard -n redhat-ods-applications --list \
  | grep '^MODULE_FEDERATION_CONFIG=' \
  | head -n1 \
  | python3 -c "import json,sys; d=json.loads(sys.stdin.read().split('=',1)[1].strip()); print('\n'.join(e['name'] for e in d))"

You should see quickstartsManager in the list.

Development

Local Setup

Developing the plugin requires a running RHOAI dashboard connected to a real OpenShift cluster. See the full Local Setup Guide for details.

npm install              # Install frontend dependencies
npm run start:dev        # Start plugin dev server on port 9500

Start the BFF in a separate terminal:

cd bff
npm install
K8S_API_BASE=$(oc whoami --show-server) npm run start:dev   # BFF on port 3000

Tip: Add K8S_TLS_INSECURE=true if your cluster uses a self-signed certificate.

Build & Test

npm run build           # Production build to dist/
npm test                # Run all tests
npm run test:watch      # Watch mode
npm run test:coverage   # Tests with coverage report
npm run lint            # ESLint + markdownlint

A Makefile is also available for unified operations across frontend and BFF — run make help for the full list.

Documentation

See the docs/ directory for detailed guides:

• Architecture — Plugin system internals, BFF pattern, extension contract
• Development — Local environment setup, customization, API reference
• Deployment — Deploying the plugin on OpenShift with Helm

License

Apache-2.0