Experimental: Show Flux reconciliation history (status.history) for Kustomization & HelmRelease

[laszlocph]

Why

Flux controllers persist a small rolling reconciliation/release history directly on the CR in status.history. This is useful for operators debugging “what changed, when, and did it work?” without digging through events/logs.

I want to add an experimental UI in Capacitor to render this history so we can validate whether it is useful in day-to-day app operations.

Reference implementation/inspiration: flux-operator web UI history timeline + navigation fix:

• web: Fix reconciler history navigation controlplaneio-fluxcd/flux-operator#532

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Data source (no new backend required)

Capacitor already watches/loads Flux resources; the history is part of the watched object JSON.

Kustomization

• kustomize.toolkit.fluxcd.io/Kustomization
• status.history[] entries typically contain:
  • digest, firstReconciled, lastReconciled, lastReconciledDuration, lastReconciledStatus, totalReconciliations
  • metadata.revision (+ sometimes metadata.originRevision)

HelmRelease

• helm.toolkit.fluxcd.io/HelmRelease
• status.history[] entries typically contain:
  • version, status (e.g. deployed / superseded), firstDeployed, lastDeployed
  • chartName, chartVersion, optional appVersion
  • digest, configDigest, optional ociDigest

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Proposed UX (mockup)

Kustomization details: add a “History” tab

Render newest-first.

Row content

• Outcome badge: derived from lastReconciledStatus (Succeeded / Failed / Other)
• Time: lastReconciled (and optionally range firstReconciled → lastReconciled when different)
• Duration: lastReconciledDuration
• Reconciliations count: totalReconciliations
• Revision: metadata.revision (clickable when source is GitRepository + SHA present, similar to existing revision rendering)
• Digest: digest (shortened, copy button)

Example:

Reconciliation history (last 5 snapshots stored by controller)

[✓ Succeeded]  2026-02-08 10:24:12Z   duration: 12.4s   reconciliations: 397
Revision: main@sha1:b070466
Digest:   sha256:d8fc4a3a7b06…

[✗ HealthCheckFailed]  2026-02-08 09:59:01Z   duration: 2m10s   reconciliations: 396
Revision: main@sha1:a8c1d2e
Digest:   sha256:91ad0c2f0f88…

HelmRelease details: add a “History” tab

Prefer HelmRelease.status.history (CR-based) for an MVP (no Helm storage access required).

Row content

• Status badge: from status (deployed / superseded / etc.)
• Revision: version
• Updated: lastDeployed
• Chart: ${chartName}@${chartVersion}
• App Version: appVersion (if present)
• Values/Config fingerprint: configDigest (shortened, copy button)

Example:

Release history (last ~5 snapshots stored by controller)

[✓ deployed]   rev: 42   2026-02-08 10:12:09Z
Chart: tailscale-operator@1.2.3   App: 0.9.1
Config digest: sha256:1a2b3c4d…

[• superseded] rev: 41   2026-02-07 18:44:31Z
Chart: tailscale-operator@1.2.2   App: 0.9.0

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Implementation notes

• Add a small reusable component (e.g. HistoryTimeline or HistoryList) that supports two schemas:
  • Kustomization-style: firstReconciled/lastReconciled/lastReconciledStatus/totalReconciliations/metadata.revision
  • HelmRelease-style: firstDeployed/lastDeployed/status/version/chartVersion/appVersion/configDigest
• Reset/avoid stale UI state when navigating between resources (see flux-operator PR #532).
• Mark as Experimental (feature flag in config, env var, or hidden behind an “Experimental” toggle).

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Acceptance criteria

• Kustomization details show a History tab when status.history exists, otherwise show “No history available”.
• HelmRelease details show a History tab when status.history exists, otherwise show “No history available”.
• Entries render newest-first and are readable on small screens (table or timeline is fine).
• Revision/digest fields are truncated but copyable; Kustomization revision is clickable for Git sources when possible.
• Feature is clearly labeled Experimental and can be disabled.

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Out of scope (for the first iteration)

• Correlating history entries with Events/logs
• Showing full diffs between digests
• Anything that requires extra cluster permissions beyond reading the CR