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Cloud-Native ML Deployment & Automation Framework

Installation · Quick Start · Tutorial · CLI Reference · Configuration Guide

What is Aigear?

Aigear is a Python package that closes the gap between model development and production deployment. Instead of coordinating across data science, MLOps, and DevOps teams to set up cloud infrastructure, containerize pipelines, and expose model APIs, you describe your project once in env.json and let Aigear handle the rest—provisioning GCP resources, building Docker images, scheduling pipeline runs on ephemeral compute, and deploying models as gRPC microservices.


Installation

Prerequisites

Aigear provisions GCP resources and manages Kubernetes deployments. The following CLI tools must be installed and authenticated before use:

  • gcloud CLI — required for all GCP operations (infrastructure, Cloud Scheduler, Artifact Registry, etc.)
    gcloud auth login
    gcloud config set project YOUR_PROJECT_ID
  • kubectl — required only if deploying the gRPC model service to GCP Kubernetes (aigear-deploy-model)

Install Aigear

pip install -U aigear

Quick Start

1. Initialize a project

aigear-init --name my_ml_service --pipeline_versions v1,v2

This creates the following project structure:

my_ml_service/
├── cloudbuild/
│   └── cloudbuild.yaml
├── docs/
├── kms/
├── src/
│   └── pipelines/
│       ├── v1/
│       │   ├── fetch_data/
│       │   ├── preprocessing/
│       │   ├── training/
│       │   └── model_service/
│       └── v2/
│           ├── fetch_data/
│           ├── preprocessing/
│           ├── training/
│           └── model_service/
├── Dockerfile.pl               # Pipeline container
├── Dockerfile.pl.dockerignore
├── docker-compose-pl.yml
├── requirements_pl.txt
├── Dockerfile.ms               # Model service container
├── Dockerfile.ms.dockerignore
├── docker-compose-ms.yml
├── requirements_ms.txt
├── env.sample.json
└── README.md

Two Dockerfiles: Dockerfile.pl is for the training pipeline; Dockerfile.ms is for the gRPC model serving service.

2. Configure env.json

Copy env.sample.json to env.json and fill in your GCP project, bucket, service accounts, etc. See the configuration guide.

3. Create GCP infrastructure

aigear-gcp-infra --create

4. Generate env schema (optional)

aigear-env-schema --generate
# Force regenerate
aigear-env-schema --generate --force

Auto-generates a Pydantic model from your env.json. This gives you full type hints and IDE auto-complete when reading configuration, so you can navigate from any variable directly back to its definition in env.json instead of looking up string keys manually.

5. Implement your pipeline

Fill in the generated scaffold with your own code:

  • Pipeline steps — implement each stage under src/pipelines/v1/ (e.g., fetch_data/, preprocessing/, training/, model_service/).
  • Dockerfiles — edit Dockerfile.pl (training pipeline) and Dockerfile.ms (model service) to install your dependencies. The generated files include working templates you can build on.
  • Dependencies — add your Python packages to requirements_pl.txt and/or requirements_ms.txt.

6. Build Docker images

# Build both pipeline and model service images (default)
aigear-image --create

# Build and push a specific image
aigear-image --create --dockerfile_path Dockerfile.pl --image_name my-pipeline --image_version v1 --push

7. Schedule pipeline steps

Creates a Cloud Scheduler job on GCP that triggers the specified pipeline steps on a cron schedule defined in env.json.

aigear-scheduler --create --version v1 --step_names fetch_data,preprocessing,training

Tip: Once created, you can go to Cloud Scheduler in the GCP Console to manually trigger an immediate run. A --run flag for triggering directly from the CLI is planned but not yet available (aigear-scheduler --version v1 --run).


Key Features

  • Infrastructure Automation: Automatically create GCS buckets, Pub/Sub topics, Cloud Scheduler jobs, Service Accounts, and more.
  • Containerized Reproducible Runs: Execute tasks inside predictable container environments to ensure reproducibility.
  • Scheduling & Auto-Retraining: Support cron schedules, dependency steps, and automated retraining pipelines.
  • Versioning & Secrets: Model versioning and configuration management with support for GCP Secret Manager.
  • Ephemeral Compute: Launch short-lived VMs or Cloud Functions to run tasks and tear them down after completion.
  • gRPC Model Serving: Deploy ML models as gRPC microservices locally or on GCP.

Architecture

Aigear Architecture


Core Principles

  • Everything is a Task: Model training, evaluation, packaging, and deployment are modeled as composable tasks.
  • Reproducible & Auditable: Each run executes in a controlled container or ephemeral instance; configurations and outputs are traceable.
  • Least Privilege & Ephemeral Resources: Use short-lived VMs or instances for jobs and automatically clean them up after completion to control cost and risk.
  • Centralized, Not Scattered: Training pipeline and model service code live together under a single versioned project. Configuration, secrets, and infrastructure definitions are consolidated in one env.json—no more hunting across repos, scripts, and dashboards.
  • You Own the Code: Aigear scaffolds the structure and handles infrastructure, but your pipeline logic runs as plain Python. No proprietary SDK to wrap your code in, no lock-in to a platform's execution model—making it easy to understand, extend, and debug compared to more opinionated MLOps platforms.

Why Aigear?

Scenario Without Aigear With Aigear
Security & permissions No clear permission boundaries — access control becomes unmanageable as the team grows Clear separation of two roles: owner (full GCP access for infrastructure provisioning, recommended to run in Cloud Shell) and developer (limited permissions for day-to-day pipeline work)
Deploy a model Wait days/weeks for DevOps to provision buckets, IAM, and schedulers Run aigear-gcp-infra --create — infrastructure ready in approximately 2 hours
Multi-team consistency Each team requests resources manually; mismatched names and roles cause repeated delays One env.json config shared across teams; Aigear creates what's missing and validates the rest
Reproducibility "Works on my laptop" — Python version mismatches, scattered secrets, failed re-runs Every pipeline runs in a versioned Docker container with validated config and automatic result logging
Cost control Forgotten VMs run all week; surprise cloud bills All VMs are ephemeral — spin up for the job, delete on completion; pay only for what runs

CLI Reference

See the full CLI Reference for all commands and arguments.

Command Description
aigear-init Initialize a new project scaffold
aigear-gcp-infra Create GCP infrastructure (buckets, IAM, Pub/Sub, schedulers)
aigear-workflow Run a single pipeline step locally
aigear-scheduler Create a Cloud Scheduler job for pipeline steps
aigear-image Build and optionally push Docker images to Artifact Registry
aigear-grpc Start a gRPC model serving server
aigear-deploy-model Deploy or delete a gRPC model service (local or GCP)
aigear-env-schema Auto-generate a Pydantic schema from env.json

Supported Platforms & Roadmap

Currently supported:

  • Cloud: Google Cloud Platform (GCS, Pub/Sub, Cloud Scheduler, Cloud Functions, Compute Engine, Kubernetes Engine, Artifact Registry)
  • Notifications: Slack
  • Compute: Ephemeral VMs(self-terminating after each job)

Known limitations:

  • Some commands only support creation — update and delete operations are not yet available for all resources
  • Resource management is incomplete — version tracking and lifecycle management are missing
  • No Cloud Build support yet
  • Pipeline orchestration is step-based on 7A8D ly — no DAG/dependency analysis yet

Planned:

  • Improve functionality
  • AWS and Azure support
  • DAG/task dependency parsing for controlled parallel execution

Contributing & Contact

Contributions, issues, and PRs are welcome. Share internal use-cases to help evolve common conventions. For questions or feature requests, open an issue in the repository or contact the maintainers.


Built with ❤️ by Retail AI Inc.

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About

Aigear is a flexible MLOps framework that supports cloud deployment. Developers can customize the framework based on their own knowledge to reduce its difficulty.

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