Multi-Template Demo

This demo shows that two different ActorTemplates running two different binaries can share a single WorkerPool — even when all three live in different namespaces.

Each ActorTemplate gates on the pool via workerSelector, a label selector matched against the pool's labels — pool selection is cluster-wide, not scoped by namespace.

Prerequisites

• A k8s cluster with Agent Substrate installed (./hack/install-ate.sh --deploy-ate-system).
• ko installed for building images.
• A GCS bucket for storing snapshots (configured via BUCKET_NAME env var).

How to Run on Agent Substrate

1. Build and Deploy

./hack/install-ate.sh --deploy-demo-multi-template

This command will:

• Build the counter and fspersist images using ko.
• Create 3 namespaces: ate-demo-multi-template-pool, ate-demo-multi-template-counter, and ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist.
• Create one WorkerPool (shared-pool) in ate-demo-multi-template-pool and two ActorTemplates — counter in ate-demo-multi-template-counter and fspersist in ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist, both selecting the pool via the same workerSelector label.
• Wait until both templates are Ready (golden snapshots built).

2. Create one actor per template

Both actors go in an atespace, which must exist first. The atespace is independent of the templates' Kubernetes namespaces, so both actors can share one.

# Install the CLI as a kubectl plugin if not already installed
go install ./cmd/kubectl-ate

# Create the atespace (required before creating actors).
kubectl ate create atespace demo

# Create two actors from different templates, both in the demo atespace.
kubectl ate create actor c1 -a demo --template ate-demo-multi-template-counter/counter
kubectl ate create actor f1 -a demo --template ate-demo-multi-template-fspersist/fspersist

3. Port-forward the atenet router

To interact with the router locally:

kubectl port-forward -n ate-system svc/atenet-router 8000:80

How to Use

When you send an HTTP request through the router, Substrate automatically detects the session, activates (resumes) the actor onto an available worker pod, and proxies the traffic.

# counter binary
curl -s -H "Host: c1.demo.actors.resources.substrate.ate.dev" http://localhost:8000
# -> hello from: <ip> | preserved memory count: 1

# fspersist binary
curl -s -H "Host: f1.demo.actors.resources.substrate.ate.dev" http://localhost:8000
# -> pod: <ip>
#    --- history ---
#    pod=<ip> | count=0 | time=<timestamp>

Confirm both actors landed on workers in the one shared-pool:

kubectl ate get workers

The counter increments its in-memory count on each request, while fspersist prepends a line to its history file on each request. Suspending and re-requesting an actor preserves that state across the snapshot/restore cycle:

kubectl ate suspend actor f1 -a demo
curl -s -H "Host: f1.demo.actors.resources.substrate.ate.dev" http://localhost:8000  # history persists; count keeps climbing

How to Uninstall

Delete the actors, then the now-empty atespace — namespace teardown does not reclaim actor records or their GCS snapshots:

# For example:
kubectl ate delete actor c1 -a demo
kubectl ate delete actor f1 -a demo
kubectl ate delete atespace demo

Then remove the templates, pool, and namespaces:

./hack/install-ate.sh --delete-demo-multi-template