ServiceAccounts

Kargo ServiceAccounts enable programmatic access to Kargo APIs without requiring a user to share short-lived credentials with non-human agents, such as a CI process.

Not what you were looking for?

If you're a project admin looking to create and manage ServiceAccounts within your projects, you may find some value in this document, but most of what you need to know can be found in the User Guide's ServiceAccounts section.

Understanding Kargo ServiceAccounts

A Kargo ServiceAccount is a Kubernetes ServiceAccount resource that has been specially labeled with rbac.kargo.akuity.io/service-account: "true" to identify it as being intended for use with Kargo.

Most ServiceAccount management in Kargo happens at the project level, where project admins can create ServiceAccounts, assign them roles, and generate authentication tokens. However, Kargo also comes with several built-in, system-level ServiceAccounts, which operators may wish to take advantage of. Users with the system-level kargo-admin role can create and delete authentication tokens for any of these.

Built-in, System-level ServiceAccounts

Kargo comes with several pre-defined, system-level ServiceAccounts in the namespace where Kargo is installed (typically kargo). These ServiceAccounts provide different levels of system-wide access:

Name	Description
kargo-admin	Complete, cluster-wide access to all Kargo resources, including the ability to manage ServiceAccounts and their tokens in all project namespaces.
kargo-viewer	Read-only, cluster-wide access to all Kargo resources. This does not include access to Secrets or ServiceAccount tokens.
kargo-user	Minimum permissions that permit listing Projects and viewing system-level configuration. Does not include access to Secrets.
kargo-project-creator	Permissions of the kargo-user role, plus the ability to create new Projects. When a project is created using the API (but not directly via kubectl), the ServiceAccount receives admin permissions within that project.

System-level ServiceAccounts can be listed using the kargo CLI:

kargo get serviceaccounts --system

NAME                    KARGO MANAGED   AGE
kargo-admin             false           4d8h
kargo-project-creator   false           4d8h
kargo-user              false           4d8h
kargo-viewer            false           4d8h

Creating Authentication Tokens

To generate a new authentication token for a system-level Kargo ServiceAccount:

kargo create serviceaccounttoken --system \
  --service-account kargo-admin \
  kargo-admin-token-1

Token created successfully!

IMPORTANT: Save this token securely. It will not be shown again.

Token: eyJhbGciOiJSUzI1NiIsImtpZCI6IjdwQ0...

danger

The token value is displayed only once during creation. Do not lose it!

If you lose the token value, you must delete the token and create a new one or the existing token's value can be retrieved by a user with sufficient permission using kubectl instead of the kargo CLI.

List all system-level authentication tokens:

kargo get serviceaccounttokens --system

NAME                  SERVICE ACCOUNT   KARGO MANAGED   AGE
kargo-admin-token-1   kargo-admin       true            5m

List authentication tokens for a specific system-level ServiceAccount:

kargo get serviceaccounttokens --system kargo-admin-token-1

Retrieve details about a specific token (note that the token value will be redacted):

kargo get serviceaccounttoken --system kargo-admin-token-1 -o yaml

Using Authentication Tokens

Authentication tokens can be used with many Kargo or Kubernetes clients. This includes tools like kubectl as well as any programming language client library for Kubernetes or Kargo.

note

While the kargo CLI does not directly support specifying a token via command line flags, you can configure it to use a token by editing ~/.config/kargo/config.

Deleting Authentication Tokens

To delete a token when it's no longer needed or to rotate credentials:

kargo delete serviceaccounttoken --system kargo-admin-token-1

serviceaccounttoken.kargo.akuity.io/kargo-admin-token-1 deleted

Verify the token has been deleted:

kargo get serviceaccounttokens --system

CLI Aliases and Shortcuts

The kargo CLI supports convenient aliases for Kargo ServiceAccount commands:

• serviceaccount, serviceaccounts, sa, sas all refer to Kargo ServiceAccounts.
• serviceaccounttoken, serviceaccounttokens, sat, sats all refer to authentication tokens.

For example:

kargo get sas --system

kargo create sat --system --service-account kargo-admin \
  kargo-admin-token-1