Admission Controller - CI/CD Glossary Definition

An admission controller inspects and can reject or mutate Kubernetes API requests before objects are stored.

An admission controller is a Kubernetes component that intercepts requests to the API server after authentication and authorization but before an object is persisted, allowing it to validate or modify the request.

Admission controllers are how clusters enforce policy at deploy time, and CI/CD pipelines often mirror the same rules earlier to catch violations before they reach the cluster.

In CI/CD

Running the same admission rules (via conftest or policy engines) in the pipeline shifts rejection left, so a manifest that would be blocked at deploy fails the build first.

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