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Version: 1.1

Architecture

This document describes high-level Botkube architecture, all components in the system and interactions between them.

Botkube is split into two main parts:

  • Botkube Core: Botkube binary that serves as a bridge between communication platforms (e.g. Slack, Discord) and Botkube plugins (sources and executors).
  • Botkube plugins: The executable binaries that communicate with Botkube Core over an RPC interface. Botkube supports two types of plugins, respectively called Source plugins and Executor plugins.

Components​

The following diagram visualizes all main components in the system.

ArchitectureArchitecture

Plugin repository​

A plugin repository is a place where plugin binaries and index file are stored. This repository must be publicly available and supports downloading assets via HTTP(s). Any static file server can be used, for instance: GitHub Pages, s3, gcs, etc.

Plugin manager​

Plugin manager takes care of downloading enabled and bound plugins, running a given plugin binary and maintaining the gRPC connection. Under the hood, the go-plugin library is used. Plugin manager is responsible both for the executor and source plugins.

Plugin executor bridge​

Plugin executor bridge is resolving the received Botkube command, calling the respective plugin, and sending back the response to a given communication platform.

Executor​

Executor is a binary that implements the executor Protocol Buffers contract. Executor runs a given command and returns the response in a synchronous way. For example, running kubectl or helm commands.

Streaming command response is not supported. As a result, commands like helm install --wait doesn't work well, as the response won't be sent until the command finishes.

The kubectl is a built-in Botkube executor. It will be extracted in the future Botkube releases.

Plugin source bridge​

Plugin source bridge is dispatching received source events to all configured communication channels.

Source​

Source is a binary that implements the source Protocol Buffers contract. Source starts asynchronous streaming of domain-specific events. For example, streaming Kubernetes events.

The kubernetes is a built-in Botkube source. It will be extracted in the future Botkube releases.

Bot​

Bot represents a bidirectional communication platform. Each bot is responsible for authenticating, managing connections, and providing an interface for receiving and sending messages for a given platform like Slack, Discord, etc. Connection is mostly done via WebSocket.

Sink​

Sink represents a unidirectional communication platform. Each sink is responsible for authenticating, managing connections, and providing an interface for sending messages for a given platform like Elasticsearch, outgoing webhook, etc.