name: CRI-O Status Capabilities
description: >-
  Workflow capabilities exposed by the CRI-O HTTP status API for runtime
  introspection, container lifecycle control, and golang debugging.
url: https://github.com/cri-o/cri-o
version: '1.0'
modified: '2026-04-28'
api: CRI-O Status API
baseURL: http://localhost
capabilities:
  - name: Runtime Introspection
    description: >-
      Retrieve daemon configuration, storage driver, cgroup driver, and
      runtime defaults to understand how CRI-O is configured on a node.
    operations:
      - getInfo
      - getConfig
    inputs:
      - cri-o socket path
    outputs:
      - daemon info JSON
      - active TOML configuration
  - name: Container Inspection
    description: >-
      Look up runtime details for a specific container by ID, including its
      sandbox, image, PID, and creation time.
    operations:
      - getContainer
    inputs:
      - container ID
    outputs:
      - container info JSON
  - name: Container Pause Control
    description: >-
      Pause and unpause running containers without killing them, useful for
      debugging, snapshotting, or coordinating workloads.
    operations:
      - pauseContainer
      - unpauseContainer
    inputs:
      - container ID
    outputs:
      - HTTP 204 on success
  - name: Daemon Debugging
    description: >-
      Dump goroutine stacks for the running CRI-O daemon to diagnose
      deadlocks, hangs, and unexpected runtime behaviour.
    operations:
      - getGoroutines
    inputs:
      - cri-o socket path
    outputs:
      - goroutine stack trace
useCases:
  - name: Node Troubleshooting
    description: >-
      Inspect storage and runtime configuration when diagnosing node-level
      Kubernetes container failures.
    capabilities:
      - Runtime Introspection
      - Container Inspection
  - name: Live Debugging
    description: >-
      Pause a misbehaving container and dump CRI-O goroutines while
      collecting forensic data, then unpause to restore service.
    capabilities:
      - Container Pause Control
      - Daemon Debugging
  - name: Operational Tooling Integration
    description: >-
      Build internal tooling that surfaces per-node CRI-O state for fleet
      operators outside of kubelet and crictl.
    capabilities:
      - Runtime Introspection
      - Container Inspection