Kubernetes has become the gold standard in container orchestration, but its complexity can make it feel like magic. What if we stripped things back to the basics and built a tiny orchestrator from scratch?

In this talk, we’ll do exactly that. Starting with Go code that runs isolated processes using namespaces and cgroups, we’ll layer on scheduling, reconciliation, and health checks. Step by step, we’ll uncover how orchestrators manage workloads, and why Kubernetes makes the design choices it does.

The goal isn’t to reinvent Kubernetes, but to demystify it. By building a minimal orchestrator together, attendees will leave with sharper intuition about what happens when you run kubectl apply, how controllers reconcile desired vs. actual state, and how orchestration primitives tie back to Linux capabilities.

This talk is ideal for developers and platform engineers who want to understand the “why” behind Kubernetes, not just the “how.”