How to Run on a Kubernetes Agent in Jenkins

A kubernetes agent block spins up a pod per build, then tears it down when done.

With the Kubernetes plugin, define an agent with a pod YAML. Each container in the pod becomes a place to run steps via the container() block, isolated per build.

A pod-templated build agent

Declare a pod with a build container and target it with container().

pipeline {
  agent {
    kubernetes {
      yaml '''
        apiVersion: v1
        kind: Pod
        spec:
          containers:
            - name: node
              image: node:20
              command: ["sleep"]
              args: ["99d"]
      '''
    }
  }
  stages {
    stage('Test') {
      steps {
        container('node') {
          sh 'npm ci && npm test'
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Notes

• The jnlp container is added automatically to connect the pod back to the controller.
• Pods are ephemeral, so each build starts clean; teams wanting managed ephemeral runners without operating Kubernetes can migrate to GitHub Actions on Latchkey.

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