How does image automation work in Flux for continuous delivery?

Flux's image automation system closes the loop between a new container image being pushed to a registry and the updated tag being committed back to the GitOps config repository — without any CI pipeline involvement. It relies on three CRs working in sequence.

1. ImageRepository: Tells Flux to scan a container registry on an interval and cache the available tags for a given image name.
2. ImagePolicy: Selects the "best" tag from those discovered by the ImageRepository, using a policy rule — semver range, alphabetical ordering, or a regex filter.
3. ImageUpdateAutomation: When the ImagePolicy resolves to a new tag, this CR commits the new tag value back to the GitOps Git repository. The Kustomization's image setter marker in the YAML file (a comment annotation) tells Flux exactly which field to update.

# Step 1: scan registry for available tags
apiVersion: image.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: ImageRepository
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  image: registry.example.com/my-app
  interval: 5m
---
# Step 2: pick the latest semver tag in the 1.x range
apiVersion: image.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta2
kind: ImagePolicy
metadata:
  name: my-app
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  imageRepositoryRef:
    name: my-app
  policy:
    semver:
      range: ">=1.0.0 <2.0.0"
---
# Step 3: commit the new tag back to Git
apiVersion: image.toolkit.fluxcd.io/v1beta1
kind: ImageUpdateAutomation
metadata:
  name: flux-system
  namespace: flux-system
spec:
  interval: 30m
  sourceRef:
    kind: GitRepository
    name: gitops-config
  git:
    commit:
      author:
        email: fluxcdbot@example.com
        name: Flux
      messageTemplate: "chore: update image to {{range .Updated.Images}}{{.}}{{end}}"
    push:
      branch: main
  update:
    path: ./apps
    strategy: Setters

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