helm show: Usage, Options & Common CI Errors
Read a chart's values, metadata, and docs before installing.
helm show (formerly helm inspect) prints information about a chart - its Chart.yaml, default values.yaml, README, or CRDs - straight from a repo or local path, no install required. It is how you learn what a third-party chart exposes.
What it does
helm show values CHART prints the chart's default values (the keys you can override); show chart prints Chart.yaml metadata; show readme prints the docs; show crds prints CRDs; show all combines them. With a repo chart you can add --version to inspect a specific version. It is read-only and cluster-independent.
Common usage
helm show values bitnami/nginx > values.default.yaml
helm show chart bitnami/nginx
helm show values bitnami/nginx --version 15.0.0
helm show readme ./charts/webCommon errors in CI
A common CI use is helm show values CHART > base.yaml to diff a chart's defaults across versions and catch breaking value renames before an upgrade. "Error: failed to download \"repo/chart\"" means the chart or version is not in your cached index. Run helm repo update, and check the --version exists. For OCI charts, use the oci:// reference (helm show values oci://registry/chart --version X), since a bare name resolves only against helm-repo-add repositories, not registries.
Using this in CI
A runner has no kubeconfig, no cached context, and no interactive auth. Every kubectl invocation in CI needs the context supplied explicitly, and most confusing CI failures here are the command running against the wrong cluster or no cluster at all.
# never rely on the ambient context on a runner
kubectl --context "$KUBE_CONTEXT" -n "$NAMESPACE" get pods
# confirm what you are actually connected to before mutating anything
kubectl config current-context
kubectl cluster-info
# fail fast instead of hanging on an unreachable API server
kubectl --request-timeout=30s get nodes