# Kubernetes Reference

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a Kubernetes service with a fully managed control plane, high availability, and autoscaling. DOKS integrates with standard Kubernetes toolchains and DigitalOcean’s load balancers, volumes, CPU and GPU Droplets, API, and CLI.

## The DigitalOcean API

The [DigitalOcean API](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/index.html.md) lets you manage resources programmatically with standard HTTP requests. All actions available in the control panel are also available through the API.

You can use the API to [create, delete, and manage Kubernetes clusters](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/api/digitalocean/index.html.md#tag/Kubernetes).

## The DigitalOcean Command Line Client, doctl

[`doctl`](https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl) is the command-line interface for the DigitalOcean API. It supports most of the same actions available in the API and DigitalOcean Control Panel.

[`doctl`](https://github.com/digitalocean/doctl) supports managing Kubernetes clusters from the command line. See the [`doctl` documentation](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/doctl/reference/kubernetes/index.html.md) or use `doctl kubernetes --help` for more information.

## The DigitalOcean MCP Server

The [DigitalOcean MCP server](https://docs.digitalocean.com/reference/mcp/index.html.md) lets you use natural language prompts to manage Kubernetes clusters and node-pools through structured, argument-based inputs. They do not require resource URIs, and they support pagination and filtering when those features are available.

## Official Kubernetes Documentation

- The [official Kubernetes documentation](https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/)
- [A conceptual overview of cloud controller managers (CCMs)](https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/architecture/cloud-controller/)