Helm Chart Visualizer

Visualize, validate, compare, and monitor Helm chart environments directly inside VS Code.

This extension is designed for teams managing multiple environment overlays (values-dev.yaml, values-qa.yaml, values-prod.yaml, etc.) and wanting a fast, consistent desktop workflow for release confidence.

What You Can Do

• Visualize a chart environment with architecture and resource insights
• Validate chart quality and best-practice issues in an actionable UI
• Compare two environments with field-level change details
• Export comparison results as Markdown (for humans) or JSON (for automation)
• Check runtime state against the cluster in a dedicated runtime dashboard
• Export rendered manifests as YAML or JSON

Tree View Experience

In Explorer, open Chart Profiles and expand:

• Chart
  • Compare Environments
  • Environment (dev/qa/staging/prod...)
    • Visualize Chart
    • Validate Chart
    • Check Runtime State

The tree is environment-aware and supports multi-root workspaces.

Core Workflows

1) Visualize Chart

Visualize Chart opens a desktop-first webview with:

• Overview tab
  • Resource architecture graph/topology
  • Values and override summary cards
  • Chart-level metrics
• Resources tab
  • Grouped resources by Kubernetes kind
  • Expandable resource cards with YAML
  • Copy resource YAML action
• Toolbar actions
  • Export YAML
  • Export JSON

2) Validate Chart

Validate Chart opens a dedicated validation view with:

• Status header aligned to result severity
• Error/Warning/Info summaries
• Search and severity filtering
• Cards view and table view
• Grouping, sorting, and actionable filtering
• Quick actions:
  • Copy issue text
  • Jump to file/line when location is available

3) Compare Environments

Compare Environments provides:

• Side-by-side environment comparison
• Added/Removed/Modified resource categorization
• Field-level value differences
• Change filters and grouped summaries
• Export Comparison Report — export as Markdown or JSON

Export Comparison Report

After running a comparison, click 📤 Export Report in the comparison view header, or run Export Comparison Report from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P).

You will be prompted to choose a save location and file format:

• Markdown (.md) — Human-readable report for PR reviews and change approvals
• JSON (.json) — Machine-readable output for automation pipelines

Example Markdown Output

# Comparison Report: dev vs prod
**Chart:** sample-app
**Generated:** 2026-03-25T16:00:00.000Z

## Summary

### Change Counts
| Category  | Count |
|-----------|-------|
| Added     | 1     |
| Removed   | 0     |
| Modified  | 2     |
| Unchanged | 5     |
| **Total** | **8** |
| Change %  | 37.5% |

### Severity Counts
| Severity    | Count |
|-------------|-------|
| 🔴 Critical | 1     |
| 🟡 Warning  | 3     |
| 🔵 Info     | 2     |

## Drift List

### Deployment/sample-app
**Status:** modified — **Critical**

| Field | dev | prod | Severity |
|-------|-----|------|----------|
| `spec.replicas` | `1` | `3` | critical |
| `spec.template.spec.containers[0].resources.limits.memory` | `"256Mi"` | `"512Mi"` | warning |

Example JSON Output

The JSON export contains the full structured comparison data, including header, summary, resource list, field diffs, and kind groups — suitable for CI/CD pipelines and automated drift analysis.

4) Check Runtime State

Check Runtime State opens a runtime dashboard (not raw markdown):

• Cluster context and connection state
• Healthy/Warning/Critical/NotFound/Unknown summaries
• Structured resource status sections
• All resources list with quick actions:
  • View YAML
• Helm release summary table

Requirements

• VS Code ^1.110.0
• Helm CLI (helm) for rendering/validation flows
• Kubernetes CLI (kubectl) for runtime state flows

Example Chart Layout

sample-app/
  Chart.yaml
  values.yaml
  values-dev.yaml
  values-qa.yaml
  values-staging.yaml
  values-prod.yaml
  templates/

Development

pnpm install
pnpm run compile

Useful scripts:

• pnpm run compile - build extension + webview assets
• pnpm run lint - lint with Biome
• pnpm run format - format with Biome
• pnpm run package - compile and produce .vsix

Security and Privacy Notes

• Local-first processing: chart rendering and analysis happen on your machine
• Runtime queries are executed through local CLIs (kubectl, helm)
• HTML output uses escaping and constrained templating paths
• Sensitive manifest content handling includes redaction safeguards in resource flows

Architecture

See ARCHITECTURE.md for module-level design and data flow.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

MIT

Support

Issues and feature requests:

• https://github.com/chaluvadis/chart-profile-visualizer/issues