Claude MCP Demo Scenarios

This repository contains demo scenarios showcasing Claude's operational capabilities with OpenShift through MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration.

Demo Scenarios

1. Cluster Health Check & Diagnostics

Scenario: "Claude, can you check if my cluster is healthy?"

What Claude Does:

  • Lists nodes and checks their status
  • Examines critical workloads (control plane, operators)
  • Reviews recent events for errors or warnings
  • Checks resource consumption (CPU, memory) via metrics server
  • Identifies pods in CrashLoopBackOff or other problematic states
  • Provides a structured health summary with actionable insights

Key Value: Comprehensive cluster assessment in seconds vs. manual kubectl/oc commands across multiple resources.


2. Security Review & Hardening

Scenario: "Review the security posture of my Calibre deployment and help me lock it down."

What Claude Does:

  • Examines pod security context and SCC assignments
  • Identifies overly permissive configurations (privileged, anyuid, root user)
  • Proposes custom SCCs with minimum viable privileges
  • Guides through incremental security hardening
  • Documents failure modes and appropriate fixes
  • Creates declarative GitOps manifests for security policies

Key Value: Expert security review without needing deep SCC knowledge. Learns the boundaries through experimentation.

Real Example: Successfully hardened Calibre from anyuid to restricted-s6 SCC, discovering s6-overlay compatibility issues and documenting workarounds.


3. Agentic Problem Solving

Scenario: User mentions NFS performance concerns in passing.

What Claude Does (without being asked):

  • Creates a test pod with appropriate tools
  • Mounts the NFS volume
  • Runs performance benchmarks (dd, fio)
  • Analyzes results and compares to expected performance
  • Cleans up test resources
  • Reports findings with context

Key Value: Proactive investigation and validation. Claude doesn't wait for explicit instructions—it understands the implied need and takes action.


4. Subtle Error Detection

Scenario: "Claude, I removed the SCC from the service account and added the new one, but the pod is still using the old SCC. What did I miss?"

What Claude Does:

  • Retrieves actual pod spec to see what SA it's using
  • Compares to the SA name in the user's command
  • Spots the typo: peantuflix-sa vs peanutflix-sa
  • Identifies the root cause immediately

Key Value: Catches typos, wrong namespaces, label selector errors, and other "stupid mistakes" that eat 30+ minutes of senior engineer time. Machines don't autocorrect what humans read.

Other Examples:

  • Off-by-one errors in array indices
  • Copy-paste artifacts (wrong resource names)
  • Namespace mismatches
  • Label selectors that silently match nothing

5. Multi-Tool Orchestration

Scenario: "Find all applications using the old Gitea URL and help me migrate them."

What Claude Does:

  • Uses ArgoCD MCP to list all applications
  • Uses OCP MCP to examine each app's manifests
  • Uses Gitea MCP to search repo contents for the old URL
  • Proposes a migration plan with git operations
  • Can execute the migration if approved

Key Value: Coordinates across multiple systems (ArgoCD, Kubernetes, Git) in a single workflow. Human would need to context-switch between tools.


6. GitOps Workflow Automation

Scenario: "Create a custom SCC for GPU workloads and apply it through GitOps."

What Claude Does:

  • Analyzes requirements (hostPath for /dev/dri, but no privilege escalation)
  • Creates SCC manifest with appropriate constraints
  • Generates ClusterRoleBinding for service account
  • Commits both to the okd-platform repo
  • ArgoCD picks up changes and applies them
  • Validates the pod starts with correct SCC

Key Value: Full GitOps workflow from requirements to validation. Everything is declarative and version-controlled.


7. Root Cause Analysis

Scenario: "My pod won't start. Help me debug it."

What Claude Does:

  • Retrieves pod status and events
  • Identifies SCC admission errors
  • Examines the deployment manifest
  • Traces through which SCCs are available to the service account
  • Finds the specific constraint violation
  • Proposes the minimal fix (not just "use privileged")

Key Value: Systematic debugging following the admission chain. Explains why something failed, not just what failed.

Real Example: Diagnosed that Plex required allowPrivilegeEscalation: true due to s6-overlay's setuid behavior, despite already having hostPath access working.


8. Documentation & Knowledge Capture

Scenario: Throughout any complex task.

What Claude Does:

  • Suggests creating documentation as issues are discovered
  • Proposes README updates with workarounds
  • Generates example manifests with inline comments
  • Creates decision records (why we chose X over Y)
  • Documents failure modes for future reference

Key Value: Operational knowledge is captured in git, not lost in someone's head. Future engineers (or future-you) benefit.


Demo Structure

Each scenario should demonstrate:

  1. Natural language input - No YAML required from the user
  2. Autonomous tool use - Claude picks the right tools
  3. Iterative problem solving - When Plan A fails, try Plan B
  4. GitOps-first approach - Everything through version control
  5. Explanation of reasoning - Not just "do this," but "here's why"

Technical Foundation

MCP Servers Used:

  • openshift-mcp-server - Kubernetes/OpenShift API operations
  • gitea-mcp-server - Git repository operations
  • argocd-mcp-server - ArgoCD application management
  • minio-mcp-server - Object storage operations

Key Capabilities:

  • Direct API access (no kubectl wrapper scripts)
  • Multi-step workflows with validation
  • Failure recovery and alternative approaches
  • Context retention across long conversations
  • Integration with existing GitOps workflows

Notes for Demo Day

  • Start simple: Cluster health check is impressive but approachable
  • Build complexity: Show multi-tool orchestration after basics
  • Highlight autonomy: The agentic scenarios (NFS testing) are most impressive
  • Show failure handling: Claude debugging its own mistakes is powerful
  • Emphasize GitOps: Everything is declarative and auditable

Future Scenarios to Develop

  • Disaster recovery: "My cluster is down, help me restore from backup"
  • Capacity planning: "Will my cluster handle 10x traffic?"
  • Security audit: "Find all workloads running as root"
  • Cost optimization: "Which pods are using the most resources?"
  • Compliance checking: "Do all our apps meet PSS restricted standards?"
Description
Demo scenarios showcasing Claude's capabilities with OpenShift MCP integration
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