---
title: "OpenChoreo: The Open Source Internal Developer Platform That Gets the Plane Architecture Right"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/openchoreo-the-open-source-internal-developer-platform-that-gets-the-plane-architecture-right-86k7cf1ff
source_url: https://daily.dev/posts/openchoreo-the-open-source-internal-developer-platform-that-gets-the-plane-architecture-right-86k7cf1ff
type: freeform
source: "Daily Open Source Tools"
author: "savi saluwadana"
published: 2026-04-06T11:22:04.075Z
updated: 2026-04-06T11:22:22.931Z
tags: ["kubernetes", "platform-engineering", "gitops", "internal-developer-platform"]
reading_time: 3
upvotes: 11
comments: 0
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# OpenChoreo: The Open Source Internal Developer Platform That Gets the Plane Architecture Right

**[Daily Open Source Tools](https://daily.dev/sources/dailyopensourcetools)** · [@savisaluwadana](https://daily.dev/savisaluwadana) · 3 min read · 11 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

OpenChoreo is an open source Internal Developer Platform (IDP) built around a four-plane architecture: Control Plane (API server, controllers, AI agents via Flux/GitOps), Workflow Plane (Argo Workflows, Cloud Native Buildpacks, pluggable CI/CD), Data Plane (workload isolation, KEDA scaling, Cilium/Kubewarden security, kgateway), and Observability Plane (OpenSearch, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry). Cross-cutting concerns like auth (OAuth2/OIDC), secret management (ESO-compatible), and container registries are all pluggable. A notable feature is first-class AI Agent Modules (SRE, FinOps, Architect agents) embedded in the Control Plane, alongside an Observer MCP in the Observability Plane, positioning OpenChoreo for agentic platform operations.

## Content

If you've been following the rise of Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs), you've probably seen a lot of "platform engineering" buzzwords without much substance. **OpenChoreo** is different, and its architecture diagram tells the whole story.

### The "Plane" Architecture - Why It Matters

OpenChoreo splits concerns into four distinct planes, each with a clear responsibility:

**Control Plane** The brain of the operation. It houses OpenChoreo Controllers, the API Server, Authorization and Access Control, and notably **AI Agent Modules** (SRE Agent). Everything you interact with (UI via Backstage, MCP, CLI, API) talks to the Control Plane. GitOps state is managed here via **Flux**.

**Workflow Plane(s)** Build and CI/CD live here. You get first-class support for **Argo Workflows** and **Cloud Native Buildpacks**, but the architecture is pluggable. Prefer GitHub Actions or Jenkins? There are community plugins for that too. This plane communicates with the Control Plane over WSS.

**Data Plane(s)** Where your actual workloads run. Isolated projects and environments with ingress/egress controls. The API Gateway layer supports **kgateway** . Elastic scaling is handled by **KEDA** (scale to zero), and security is enforced by **Cilium** and **Kubewarden** via the Guard Modules.

**Observability Plane(s)** A full observability stack, not bolted on, but built in as a first-class plane. Logging via **OpenSearch and OpenObserve**, metrics via **Prometheus and Fluentbit**, and tracing via **OpenTelemetry**. Workflow and runtime observability feed into this plane via dedicated pipelines.

### Cross-Cutting Concerns Done Right

What stands out is how OpenChoreo handles the things most platforms leave as an exercise for the reader:

- **Authentication** - Pluggable OAuth2/OIDC with WSO2 Thunder
- **Secret Management** - Any ESO-compatible Secret Store / Key Vault
- **Container Registry** - Any OCI-compliant registry
- **GitOps** - Any Git provider via Flux

### The AI Angle

The embedded **AI Agent Modules** in the Control Plane are worth a closer look. Having SRE, FinOps, and Architect agents as first-class citizens, not third-party add-ons, signals where platform engineering is heading. Pair that with the **Observer MCP** in the Observability Plane and you have a foundation for genuinely agentic platform operations.

### Why OpenChoreo?

- Kubernetes-native across all planes
- Pluggable at every layer, no vendor lock-in
- AI agents as first-class platform citizens
- Full observability built-in, not bolted on

If you are building or evaluating an IDP in 2025, OpenChoreo's architecture is worth a deep dive. The plane separation alone makes it one of the cleaner open source platform designs out there.

[https://openchoreo.dev/](https://openchoreo.dev/)

---

Tags: [#kubernetes](https://daily.dev/tags/kubernetes), [#platform-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/platform-engineering), [#gitops](https://daily.dev/tags/gitops), [#internal-developer-platform](https://daily.dev/tags/internal-developer-platform)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/openchoreo-the-open-source-internal-developer-platform-that-gets-the-plane-architecture-right-86k7cf1ff)