generated: '2026-09-02'
method: searched
source: https://ambientmesh.io/docs/setup/install/
provider: Ambient Mesh
providerId: ambient-mesh
description: >-
  Distribution artifacts for Ambient Mesh. There are NO first-party client SDKs
  and no Ambient Mesh package on npm, PyPI, RubyGems, crates.io, NuGet, Maven
  Central, Packagist or pkg.go.dev — the product is not consumed through a
  client library, it is installed into a Kubernetes cluster. What ships instead
  are Helm charts, container images and an install script. No SDKs pointer is
  emitted, because none of these is a client SDK.

sdk_count: 0
package_count: 6

packages:
  - language: n/a
    registry: helm
    name: istio/base
    url: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts
    install: helm install istio-base istio/base -n istio-system --create-namespace --wait
    version: 1.30.4
    published: '2026-08-27'
    version_source: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts/index.yaml
    official: false
    publisher: Istio project (upstream)
    note: >-
      CRDs and cluster roles. Published by the Istio project, not by Ambient
      Mesh; ambientmesh.io documents it as the required first install step.
      Branch 1.29 was simultaneously at 1.29.7 (2026-08-27).
  - language: n/a
    registry: helm
    name: istio/istiod
    url: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts
    install: helm install istiod istio/istiod --namespace istio-system --set profile=ambient --wait
    version: 1.30.4
    published: '2026-08-27'
    version_source: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts/index.yaml
    official: false
    publisher: Istio project (upstream)
    note: control plane, installed with the ambient profile
  - language: n/a
    registry: helm
    name: istio/cni
    url: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts
    install: helm install istio-cni istio/cni -n istio-system --set profile=ambient --wait
    version: 1.30.4
    published: '2026-08-27'
    version_source: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts/index.yaml
    official: false
    publisher: Istio project (upstream)
    note: node agent that redirects enrolled pod traffic to ztunnel
  - language: n/a
    registry: helm
    name: istio/ztunnel
    url: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts
    install: helm install ztunnel istio/ztunnel -n istio-system --wait
    version: 1.30.4
    published: '2026-08-27'
    version_source: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts/index.yaml
    official: false
    publisher: Istio project (upstream)
    note: the ambient data-plane node proxy — the component that makes this ambient mode
  - language: n/a
    registry: oci
    name: us-docker.pkg.dev/soloio-img/istio
    url: https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/solo-builds/
    install: helm upgrade ... --set global.hub=us-docker.pkg.dev/soloio-img/istio --set global.tag=1.30.0-solo
    version: 1.30.0-solo
    published: null
    version_source: >-
      Read from the documented example on
      https://ambientmesh.io/docs/operations/solo-builds/ (export TAG=1.30.0-solo).
      No anonymous registry metadata endpoint was queried, so the publish date
      is unknown rather than guessed.
    official: true
    publisher: Solo.io
    license: proprietary
    note: >-
      Solo.io builds of Istio, free for community use but explicitly "not open
      source". They add sidecar/ambient interoperability for zero-downtime
      migration; HTTP observability in ztunnel and FIPS images require a Solo
      Enterprise for Istio licence key.
  - language: n/a
    registry: cdn
    name: get.ambientmesh.io quickstart installer
    url: https://get.ambientmesh.io/
    install: curl https://get.ambientmesh.io | sh -
    version: null
    published: null
    version_source: >-
      Unpinned. The URL carries no version segment and the script resolves the
      manifest at run time by detecting the cluster distribution, so a consumer
      cannot tell from the URL which version they are about to install. Recorded
      as null deliberately — checked, nothing to record.
    official: true
    publisher: Ambient Mesh
    note: >-
      3,089-byte bash script (HTTP 200, text/plain) that detects the Kubernetes
      distribution (gke, k3s, k3d, minikube, microk8s, openshift, default),
      applies the Gateway API CRDs from
      gateway-api v1.3.0 standard-install.yaml, then applies the matching
      manifest from https://get.ambientmesh.io/yamls/<distro>.yaml. The default
      manifest is 974,651 bytes of text/yaml. Note the version drift: this
      installer pins Gateway API v1.3.0 while the Helm install docs pin v1.5.0.

registries_probed:
  - registry: npm
    query: https://registry.npmjs.org/-/v1/search?text=ambient-mesh
    status: 200
    result: >-
      No Ambient Mesh package. Top hits are unrelated 3D-graphics libraries
      (three-mesh-bvh, @pixi/mesh).
  - registry: pypi
    query: https://pypi.org/pypi/ambient-mesh/json
    status: 404
    result: absent
  - registry: rubygems
    query: https://rubygems.org/api/v1/gems/ambient-mesh.json
    status: 404
    result: absent
  - registry: crates.io
    query: https://crates.io/api/v1/crates?q=ambient-mesh
    status: 200
    result: >-
      Only `ambient_meshes` (last updated 2023-05-06), a 3D-mesh crate from the
      unrelated Ambient game engine. Not this provider.
  - registry: go
    query: https://proxy.golang.org/github.com/solo-io/ambient-mesh/@v/list
    status: 404
    result: absent
  - registry: helm
    query: https://istio-release.storage.googleapis.com/charts/index.yaml
    status: 200
    result: the four charts recorded above

cli:
  see: cli/ambient-mesh-cli.yml