agnes-the-ai-analyst/docs/ONBOARDING.md

Onboarding a new Agnes instance

End-to-end guide for deploying Agnes into a new GCP project. Target time: under 1 hour.

The target reader is a Keboola ops engineer or a customer with GCP Owner access.

Overview

Every Agnes instance lives in one GCP project per customer, driven by a private infra repo cloned from keboola/agnes-infra-template. The upstream app + TF module is in keboola/agnes-the-ai-analyst; customers do not fork it.

Prerequisites

• GCP project with billing linked (you / customer owns it)
• gcloud CLI authenticated as project Owner
• terraform ≥ 1.5
• gh CLI authenticated
• (optional) docker for local smoke tests

1. Bootstrap GCP

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keboola/agnes-the-ai-analyst/main/scripts/bootstrap-gcp.sh -o bootstrap-gcp.sh
chmod +x bootstrap-gcp.sh
./bootstrap-gcp.sh <GCP_PROJECT_ID>

Outputs:

• agnes-deploy@<project>.iam.gserviceaccount.com (Terraform SA with scoped roles)
• gs://agnes-<project>-tfstate (versioned, uniform bucket-level access)
• ./agnes-deploy-<project>-key.json (SA JSON key — store in ~/.agnes-keys/ or password manager, not git)

Idempotent — safe to re-run.

2. Customer's data source secrets

If data_source = "keboola":

echo -n "<KEBOOLA_STORAGE_TOKEN>" | gcloud secrets create keboola-storage-token \
    --data-file=- --replication-policy=automatic --project=<GCP_PROJECT_ID>

3. Create private infra repo from template

Create and clone in one step (the --clone flag waits for the template copy to finish; cloning in two steps can race):

gh repo create <customer-org>/agnes-infra-<customer> \
    --template keboola/agnes-infra-template \
    --private \
    --clone
cd agnes-infra-<customer>

Upload the SA key to GitHub secrets:

gh secret set GCP_SA_KEY < ~/.agnes-keys/agnes-deploy-<project>-key.json

Create GitHub environments dev (no protection) and prod (required reviewer, wait timer 5 min, branch main only):

gh api -X PUT repos/<customer-org>/agnes-infra-<customer>/environments/dev
echo '{"wait_timer":300,"deployment_branch_policy":{"protected_branches":true,"custom_branch_policies":false}}' \
  | gh api -X PUT repos/<customer-org>/agnes-infra-<customer>/environments/prod --input -

Add reviewers via GitHub UI (Settings → Environments → prod).

4. Configure tfvars and backend

Edit terraform/main.tf:

backend "gcs" {
  bucket = "agnes-<GCP_PROJECT_ID>-tfstate"
  prefix = "<customer>"
}

Copy the example and fill it in:

cp terraform/terraform.tfvars.example terraform/terraform.tfvars
# Edit:
#   gcp_project_id    = "<GCP_PROJECT_ID>"
#   customer_name     = "<customer>"
#   seed_admin_email  = "...@customer.com"
#   (optionally) keboola_stack_url, prod_instance, dev_instances

5. First apply

cd terraform
export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS=~/.agnes-keys/agnes-deploy-<project>-key.json
terraform init
terraform plan
terraform apply

Or push terraform.tfvars committed path and let GitHub Actions do it:

git add . && git commit -m "initial: <customer> deployment" && git push origin main
# CI runs apply-dev, waits for prod reviewer, then apply-prod

Output: prod_ip = external IP.

6. Bootstrap admin user

On the first deploy the users table is empty. Create the first admin via POST /auth/bootstrap (this endpoint auto-disables once ≥1 user exists):

PROD_IP=$(terraform output -raw prod_ip)
curl -X POST "http://$PROD_IP:8000/auth/bootstrap" \
    -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
    -d '{"email":"admin@<customer>.com","name":"Admin","password":"<STRONG_PASSWORD>"}'

Log in: http://<prod_ip>:8000/login.

7. DNS + TLS (optional)

For HTTPS, set in terraform.tfvars:

prod_instance = {
  ...
  tls_mode = "caddy"
  domain   = "agnes.<customer>.com"
}

Then create a DNS A-record pointing agnes.<customer>.com → prod_ip. Caddy will auto-issue Let's Encrypt cert.

8. Smoke test

PROD_IP=$(cd terraform && terraform output -raw prod_ip)

# Health
curl "http://$PROD_IP:8000/api/health" | jq '.status'  # "healthy" or "degraded"

# First sync (populates data from Keboola / other source)
curl -X POST "http://$PROD_IP:8000/api/sync/trigger" \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $ADMIN_JWT"

9. Monitoring + backup (recommended)

• Cloud Monitoring alert on /api/health status != "healthy" for > 5 min
• Daily snapshot of /data PD: gcloud compute resource-policies create snapshot-schedule ...
• Slack webhook from Cloud Monitoring for alerts

(These are follow-ups — not required for first deploy.)

Ongoing maintenance

• App auto-upgrades (cron every 5 min) to latest :stable if upgrade_mode = "auto". Else Renovate will open PR on new stable-YYYY.MM.N.
• Infra module upgrade: change ref=infra-vX.Y.Z in terraform/main.tf, PR → plan → merge → apply. (Renovate opens these PRs automatically when enabled.)
• Add dev VM for a branch: add entry to dev_instances list with image_tag = "dev-feature-xyz", PR, merge, apply.
• Token rotation: gcloud secrets versions add keboola-storage-token --data-file=- then run the auto-upgrade script on each VM:

  gcloud compute ssh agnes-prod --zone=... --project=... --command="sudo /usr/local/bin/agnes-auto-upgrade.sh"
  

  Or restart containers directly: sudo docker compose -f ... restart app.

Propagating module (startup-script) changes

Important gotcha: The customer-instance module has lifecycle { ignore_changes = [metadata_startup_script] } on VMs — this is intentional so terraform apply doesn't reboot VMs on every rerun. The consequence is that changes inside the startup script are not picked up on a normal terraform apply.

To propagate a startup-script change (for example, after bumping ref=infra-v1.3.0):

# VM is recreated; boot disk is fresh; persistent data disk is preserved
terraform apply -replace='module.agnes.google_compute_instance.vm["agnes-prod"]'

Downtime: ~2 minutes. The persistent data disk (where /data lives) is not recreated — only the VM. Startup script re-runs on the new VM with the latest template content, and your data is still there.

Alternative (less disruptive): hot-patch the VM via SSH:

gcloud compute ssh agnes-prod --zone=... --project=... --command="sudo bash -c '
  cd /opt/agnes
  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keboola/agnes-the-ai-analyst/main/docker-compose.prod.yml -o docker-compose.prod.yml
  curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/keboola/agnes-the-ai-analyst/main/docker-compose.host-mount.yml -o docker-compose.host-mount.yml
  docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.prod.yml -f docker-compose.host-mount.yml up -d
'"

This preserves container state but won't re-install cron / rebuild persistent disk layout.

Restoring from backup

Daily snapshots of each data disk are created automatically (module ≥ infra-v1.3.0). Retention: 30 days.

To restore:

# List snapshots for a specific disk
gcloud compute snapshots list --project=<GCP_PROJECT_ID> \
    --filter="sourceDisk~agnes-prod-data"

# Create a new disk from a snapshot
gcloud compute disks create agnes-prod-data-restored \
    --source-snapshot=<SNAPSHOT_NAME> \
    --zone=europe-west1-b \
    --type=pd-ssd \
    --project=<GCP_PROJECT_ID>

# Stop the VM, swap disks:
gcloud compute instances stop agnes-prod --zone=...
gcloud compute instances detach-disk agnes-prod --disk=agnes-prod-data --zone=...
gcloud compute instances attach-disk agnes-prod --disk=agnes-prod-data-restored --device-name=data --zone=...
gcloud compute instances start agnes-prod --zone=...

# Verify /api/health, then optionally delete the old disk

For Terraform state consistency after manual disk swap, you may need terraform state rm + terraform import for the disk resource.

Monitoring alerts

Module ≥ infra-v1.3.0 creates per-VM uptime checks + alert policies. To receive notifications, wire a Monitoring notification channel:

# Email channel
gcloud alpha monitoring channels create \
    --display-name="Agnes ops email" \
    --type=email \
    --channel-labels=email_address=ops@<customer>.com \
    --project=<GCP_PROJECT_ID>

# Get the channel ID, then in terraform.tfvars:
#   notification_channel_ids = ["projects/<project>/notificationChannels/<id>"]
# terraform apply

For Slack integrations, use type slack with a webhook URL.

Decommission

cd terraform
terraform destroy

Then delete:

• GCS bucket gs://agnes-<project>-tfstate (or keep for audit)
• Service account agnes-deploy@...
• Secret Manager secrets (keboola-storage-token, agnes-<customer>-jwt-secret)
• GitHub private repo <customer-org>/agnes-infra-<customer>

Troubleshooting

See keboola/agnes-the-ai-analyst issues and docs.