Back in 2017, we noticed that developers creating Kubernetes-native applications spent a long time building and managing container images across registries, manually updating their Kubernetes manifests, and redeploying their applications every time they made even the smallest code changes. We set out to create a tool to automate these tasks, helping them focus on writing and maintaining code rather than managing the repetitive steps required during the edit-debug-deploy ‘inner loop’. From this observation, Skaffold was born.

Today, we're announcing our first generally available release of Skaffold. Skaffold simplifies common operational tasks that you perform when doing Kubernetes development, letting you focus on your code changes and see them rapidly reflected on your cluster. It's the underlying engine that drives Cloud Code, and a powerful tool in and of itself for improving developer productivity.