Runtime Offline

Runtime-offline means drydock does not need live Argo CD or Kubernetes runtime access to discover, render, test, diff, inspect images, or report diagnostics. It renders desired state from repository contents, explicit mappings, and drydock caches.

Runtime-offline does not mean every source network request is disabled. Declared Git, HTTP Helm, OCI Helm, and remote Kustomize sources can still be fetched into explicit caches unless --offline is set.

Runtime Boundary

Runtime-offline describes the live services drydock does not need while a command runs. It does not call:

• Live Kubernetes APIs.
• Live Argo CD APIs.
• Argo CD server-side diff.
• Kubernetes defaulting or admission webhooks.
• Live managed-fields ownership data.
• Live Application health aggregation.

Those behaviors stay runtime-boundary diagnostics or documented gaps; drydock does not silently approximate them from live state.

For how covered render output is validated against real Argo CD, see Argo CD Render Parity .

When To Use --offline

Use --offline when a command must be source-offline as well as runtime-offline:

drydock test apps --path . --offline
drydock diff apps --path . --path-orig ../baseline --offline

With --offline, source resolution must use local files, --repo-map, or existing cache entries.

For the complete support boundary, see the canonical compatibility notes and the live runtime design gate .