Take the Echoes Lost in Orbit Challenge: Broken Echoes [Beginner]

[Michal_Gebacki]

Level: Beginner

👉 This Challenge, with all of its three levels, created Katharina Sick (@ksick) from the OffOn Community!

This Challenge Level is best suited for:

Platform engineers, developers, and anyone curious about internal developer platforms and self-service scaffolding. No prior Backstage experience is needed, but familiarity with YAML and basic Git concepts will help.

Mission objective See two distinct Applications in the Argo CD dashboard (one per environment) and ensure each Application deploys to its own isolated namespace Make the system resilient so Argo CD automatically reverts manual cluster changes Confirm that updates roll out automatically without leaving stale resources behind

Key Learnings Debug GitOpsGit Operations flows with Argo CD ApplicationSet templating & pitfalls Environment isolation & namespaces Sync policies: automated, prune & self-heal

This Challenge’s Level story:

The Echo Server is misbehaving. Both environments seem to be down, and messages are silent.

Your mission: investigate the Argo CD configuration and restore proper multi-environment delivery.

This Challenge Level’s architecture:

The Echo Server is down across both environments. Investigate the Argo CD ApplicationSet configuration, spot the templating pitfalls, and restore proper multi-environment delivery.

Walkthrough

1. Get started

Open in GitHub Codespaces.

The devcontainerdevelopment container: a portable, reproducible coding environment defined by a configuration file is pre-configured and starts automatically. When you push from Codespaces, GitHub forks the repository to your account automatically.

Prefer working locally? Clone the repo and open it in any editor that supports the Dev Containers specification (VS CodeVisual Studio Code, JetBrains, and others). The devcontainer config will be detected automatically.

2. Wait for Infrastructure

Wait around 5 minutes for the Codespace to provision a Kubernetes cluster, Argo CD, and the sample app. Press Cmd+Shift+P (or Ctrl+Shift+P on Windows/Linux) and search for 'View Creation Log' to track progress.

3. Explore the Uls

Open the Ports tab and navigate to each service:

• Port 30100: Argo CD (readonly / a-super-secure-password). View application sync status and manage Argo CD resources.

4. Fix the ApplicationSet

All errors are in this file:

manifests/appset.yaml

This challenge uses Kustomize under the hood: a base set of manifests with environment-specific overlays (staging, prod). Argo CD detects and applies these automatically, so your focus is on fixing the ApplicationSet to properly reference the Kustomize-managed paths.

After making changes, apply them:

kubectl apply -n argocd -f manifests/appset.yaml

5. Run the Smoke Test

Run the smoke test to verify your solution locally:

make verify

How to complete your challenge?

	When you push from Codespaces, GitHub forks the repository to your account automatically. If you are working locally, fork the repository on GitHub before pushing.
	Verify your solution: ./verify.sh
	If it passes, it generates a Certificate of Completion you can paste into the discussion.
	Share your solutions in this thread in answer below and mention your achievement on your LinkedIn account!

Toolbox kubectl - Kubernetes CLICommand Line Interface for interacting with the cluster k9s - terminal UIUser Interface for managing and inspecting your cluster

kubens - fast way to switch between Kubernetes namespaces

Are you ready? Take the challenge’s mission! Open in Codespaces Free GitHub account required. Launch in a preconfigured devcontainer.

Don’t forget about benefits! For completing at least one level you get a unique badge! For completing all of the three levels you get even more badges! Deadline: 13 October 2026 at 23:59 CET

Other levels of this challenge

Intermediate	The Silent Canary [Coming Soon]
Expert	Hyperspace Operations [Coming Soon]