<!-- Copyright (c) 2026 Tigera, Inc. All rights reserved. Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 -->

confd

confd watches the Calico datastore and renders BIRD's configuration from the templates under node/filesystem/etc/calico/confd/templates/. It runs as a runit service inside the node container alongside Felix and BIRD; see node/DESIGN.md.

This component does not yet have a design doc of its own. The one area that is written up is the split of route-programming responsibility between confd/BIRD and Felix, which is cross-component and lives at the repo level:

• design/cluster-route-programming/DESIGN.md — which component programs the routes to workloads on other nodes, per encapsulation type; the programClusterRoutes fields on BGPConfiguration and FelixConfiguration; the deprecation of BIRD-programmed IPIP cluster routes and of the krt_tunnel BIRD fork.

Operational guidance (flags, logging, no-op mode, BIRD config examples) is under confd/docs/.

Update the design under design/, not this file. This file is a discoverability pointer.