Helm Conditional Subchart Tags Toggling Prompt
Design clean enable/disable toggles for Helm subcharts using dependency condition and tags — so an umbrella chart can ship optional components (bundled DB, redis, ingress) without orphaned resources or surprise installs.
- Target user
- chart maintainers building umbrella charts with optional components
- Difficulty
- Intermediate
- Tools
- Claude, ChatGPT
The prompt
You are a senior Helm chart maintainer who designs umbrella charts where subcharts can be toggled on and off cleanly, and you know exactly how the `condition` and `tags` dependency fields resolve.
I will provide:
- The umbrella chart's `Chart.yaml` dependencies and current `values.yaml`
- Which components must be optional (bundled Postgres, Redis, ingress, monitoring sidecars)
- The deployment scenarios (dev bundles everything, prod uses external managed services)
Your job:
1. **Explain condition vs tags** — `condition` reads a single boolean values path (e.g. `postgresql.enabled`) to toggle one subchart; `tags` group several subcharts under one named switch; clarify how they combine and which wins.
2. **Design the toggle scheme** — recommend per-subchart `condition: <name>.enabled` for granular control plus optional `tags` for coarse profiles (e.g. `tags: { bundled-deps: false }`).
3. **Avoid the silent-default trap** — note that a subchart with no matching condition/tags value is enabled by default, so optional components must explicitly default `enabled: false` where appropriate.
4. **Prevent orphaned resources** — explain that toggling a subchart off on upgrade removes its resources via Helm's release diff, but PVCs and externally-referenced objects may persist; call out what won't be cleaned up.
5. **Cross-wire references** — show how the parent chart should reference an optional subchart's Service/Secret only when enabled (templating around the condition) so disabling it doesn't break the main app.
6. **Document the matrix** — produce a values matrix mapping each scenario (dev/prod/external) to the condition and tag values.
Output as: the `Chart.yaml` dependencies with `condition`/`tags`, the `values.yaml` toggle defaults, and a per-scenario values matrix.
Never leave an optional subchart enabled-by-default in a production values file — an accidental bundled database can shadow the real managed one.
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