Platform Engineering Labs has announced a major update to its open-source Infrastructure-as-Code platform, formae, introducing full Kubernetes support, native Helm integration, direct .tfvars compatibility, and a new public plugin hub aimed at simplifying cloud-native infrastructure management. The release significantly expands formae's capabilities as a unified "system of record" for infrastructure operations, enabling platform teams to manage Kubernetes environments and multi-cloud ecosystems with automated change codification and reduced operational overhead.
The update positions formae more directly against established Infrastructure-as-Code platforms by adding support for standard Kubernetes resources as well as managed cloud variants such as Amazon EKS and Microsoft AKS. Teams can now integrate existing Helm charts directly into formae workflows without re-architecting deployments, while the platform continuously discovers, versions, and codifies infrastructure changes, even when those changes are made by external tools. According to Platform Engineering Labs, this removes much of the operational friction traditionally associated with managing large Kubernetes estates across multiple tooling ecosystems.
Kubernetes has become foundational to modern platform engineering, but maintaining consistent visibility and governance across rapidly changing clusters remains a persistent challenge. formae's new Kubernetes support extends the platform's core model, automatically codifying infrastructure state without relying on fragile state files, into the cloud-native ecosystem. Unlike traditional Infrastructure-as-Code tools that tightly couple resource definitions and execution state, formae continuously derives its source of truth directly from live infrastructure.
This enables organizations to continue using existing Kubernetes tooling while formae independently tracks and versions every infrastructure change. The approach is designed to reduce operational drift and eliminate many of the migration and synchronization challenges common in multi-tool Kubernetes environments. Native Helm integration further simplifies adoption by allowing teams to reuse existing charts and deployment patterns instead of rebuilding infrastructure definitions from scratch.
Alongside Kubernetes support, Platform Engineering Labs launched the formae Public Hub, a centralized environment for sharing, publishing, and discovering community plugins. The hub builds on the company's Plugin SDK introduced earlier in 2026 and provides integrated build and test capabilities intended to improve plugin reliability and compatibility across environments.
The company says the Public Hub also introduces a simpler plugin management model than many incumbent IaC platforms. Traditional tools often bind plugins tightly to individual projects and environments, creating operational complexity at scale. formae instead separates plugin lifecycle management from individual deployments, reducing the need for additional tooling and simplifying large-scale infrastructure management.
The release also expands formae's interoperability with existing Infrastructure-as-Code ecosystems, particularly Terraform. While formae already supported infrastructure discovery without requiring resource migration, the latest update now enables direct consumption of Terraform .tfvars files. This allows organizations to reuse existing configuration parameters and variable definitions without manually converting or recreating them.
By supporting both live infrastructure discovery and existing Terraform configuration artifacts, Platform Engineering Labs is attempting to reduce one of the largest barriers to adopting new infrastructure tooling: the operational cost and risk of migration. The company also indicated that formae is designed to integrate with additional configuration databases and external parameter sources in the future.
The announcement comes as the Infrastructure-as-Code and platform engineering markets undergo significant change driven by Kubernetes adoption, multi-cloud architectures, and AI-assisted operations. Established tools such as Terraform, Pulumi, and GitOps-focused systems like Argo CD have increasingly expanded into Kubernetes-native workflows, but many still rely heavily on state management, project-level plugin dependencies, or manual reconciliation processes.
Platform Engineering Labs is differentiating formae by positioning it less as a traditional declarative provisioning tool and more as a continuously updated infrastructure system-of-record capable of automatically codifying operational changes regardless of their origin. This approach aligns with a broader industry movement toward reducing manual infrastructure reconciliation and enabling more autonomous platform operations.
The latest release also reflects growing demand for infrastructure systems that are easier to extend, automate, and integrate with AI-assisted workflows. Earlier formae releases introduced schema-safe plugin development and AI-assisted infrastructure customization, and the addition of Kubernetes support and the Public Hub further expands the platform's extensibility.