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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/chaos-mesh/chaos-mesh/llms.txt

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Chaos Mesh provides a comprehensive set of APIs for creating and managing chaos experiments in Kubernetes. The APIs are divided into two main categories:

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Kubernetes CRD APIs

Chaos Mesh extends Kubernetes with Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) that allow you to define chaos experiments declaratively. Each CRD type represents a specific category of fault injection:

PodChaos

Kill pods, containers, or inject pod failures

NetworkChaos

Inject network delays, packet loss, corruption, and partitions

IOChaos

Inject I/O latency, faults, and file system errors

StressChaos

Stress CPU and memory resources

TimeChaos

Simulate time skew and clock offset

Common Types

Shared types used across all chaos experiments

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gRPC API

The Chaos Daemon exposes a gRPC API that the controller uses to apply chaos actions directly on nodes:

gRPC Overview

Overview of the ChaosDaemon gRPC service

ChaosDaemon API

Complete gRPC service and message reference

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API Version

All Chaos Mesh CRDs use the chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1 API version: 
apiVersion: chaos-mesh.org/v1alpha1
kind: PodChaos
metadata:
  name: pod-kill-example
spec:
  action: pod-kill
  mode: one
  selector:
    namespaces:
      - default

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Common Structure

All chaos CRDs share a common structure:
  • TypeMeta: Standard Kubernetes type metadata (apiVersion, kind)
  • ObjectMeta: Standard Kubernetes object metadata (name, namespace, labels, annotations)
  • Spec: Chaos-specific configuration including selectors and action parameters
  • Status: Current state of the chaos experiment

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Selector Configuration

Most chaos types use selectors to target specific pods or containers. See Common Types for details on:
  • PodSelector - Select pods by namespace, labels, and other criteria
  • ContainerSelector - Select specific containers within pods
  • SelectorMode - Control how many targets are affected (one, all, fixed, percentage)

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Next Steps

Common Types

Learn about shared types like PodSelector and Duration

Create Your First Experiment

Get started with a simple chaos experiment