kubelet
also: kubelet daemon
Kubelet is the primary node agent in Kubernetes that runs on each worker node to manage containers and ensure pods are running as specified.
Kubelet is a daemon process that communicates with the Kubernetes control plane (API server) and manages the container runtime on individual worker nodes. It receives pod specifications from the API server and ensures that containers are created, running, and healthy according to those specifications.
On each node, kubelet monitors pod lifecycle, handles container startup and shutdown, manages volumes, and reports node and pod status back to the control plane. If a container crashes, kubelet can automatically restart it based on restart policies defined in the pod specification.
Example: When you deploy a Kubernetes pod with kubectl apply -f pod.yaml, the scheduler assigns it to a worker node, and that node's kubelet receives the pod spec and instructs its container runtime (like Docker or containerd) to pull the image and start the container.