The Kaiten Playbooks

Eight tracks. One control plane. Zero glue code.

Concrete, role-by-role guides for B2B SaaS teams who want to stop treating billing, flags, entitlements and deployment as four separate problems.

Request early accessBrowse all 8 playbooks
8
Playbooks
8
Personas
~55 min
Total read
100%
Open-source
What is Kaiten?

One unified data model. Five capability pillars.

Each playbook is a concrete scenario these pillars unlock — written for a specific role, starting from a pain you've probably felt, ending with something you can ship in an afternoon.

Organization → Customer → Instance → License → Entitlement

Pillar 1

Deployment orchestration

Components, Releases, and Deployment Zones. Multi-cloud and standalone, from one console.

Pillar 2

Feature flags & lifecycle

OpenFeature-native flags with CEL targeting. Flag evaluations auto-recorded for adoption analytics.

Pillar 3

Entitlements & licensing

First-class licensing primitives. Billing-agnostic. Vouchers that combine price, quota and flag grants.

Pillar 4

AI Control Plane

Flexible JSON entitlements for token-based pricing. The only system that knows what a customer paid for AND what model they used.

Pillar 5

Customer intelligence

Native 360° view on entitlements, usage, flag activity, deployment state. Zero external connectors needed for V1.

How to use this catalog

Pick a track, ship something this week.

Each track is a self-contained reading path — 20–30 minutes, hand-picked for a specific goal.

Technical track

Ship cleaner, deploy faster

#1#2#5#8

SDK integration, feature rollout, multi-cloud deploy, and architecture migration.

Commercial track

Close deals, retain customers

#3#7#4

How Sales, CS, and Finance move faster on custom deals, trial extensions, and AI monetization.

Strategic track

Scale the business

#6#8#4

For founders and leadership: open-source pipeline, architecture decisions, AI monetization strategy.

Full read

All 8 in order

#1#2#3#4#5#6#7#8

The complete tour, ~55 min. Recommended for PMs, architects, and anyone evaluating Kaiten end-to-end.

The catalog

The 8 playbooks.

Each one: a role, a pain, an outcome, and the Kaiten capabilities that get you there.

01
Backend Developer
⏱ 7 min read⚙ 15 min setup

Replace hardcoded plan checks with one SDK call

Outcome

From 47 scattered if (plan === 'enterprise') → one OpenFeature SDK call, zero plan logic in code.

The pain
Plan logic leaked across the codebase: 47 if (plan === ...) checks, some referencing tiers deprecated 18 months ago. Every new commercial package requires a PR. Lead time from signature to production: 3 to 7 days. Fixtures hardcode fake plans, so real logic is never tested.
The approach
Install the standard OpenFeature SDK in your language. Point it at Kaiten's OFREP endpoint. Replace every plan check with a single client.checkEntitlement() call. Generate typed constants via the Kaiten CLI for compile-time safety.
Kaiten capabilities
OpenFeature SDKOFREP endpointEntitlement types (BOOLEAN · NUMBER · CONFIG)CLI codegenFeature audit trail
Why it matters
Plan-as-commercial-concept is decoupled from capability-as-code. Sales closes custom deals without involving Engineering. Compliance gets an immutable audit trail. No vendor lock-in — the SDK is standard, only the backend behind it is Kaiten.
02
Product Manager
⏱ 6 min read⚙ 10 min setup

Launch a new feature to 10% of Pro customers — no tracking code

Outcome

From 2-week instrumentation sprint → production rollout in one afternoon, adoption visible instantly.

The pain
A simple progressive rollout balloons into a spec: cohort logic in app code, analytics schema additions, three new endpoints. The flag tool doesn't know about pricing tiers, so teams end up ANDing two systems. Adoption tracking adds 1–2 weeks of instrumentation.
The approach
Create a feature flag in the Kaiten Console with a CEL targeting rule (instance.license.name == "pro"). Set the default variant to rollout_percentage with 10/90. Every SDK evaluation is automatically logged — that's your adoption dashboard, no instrumentation required.
Kaiten capabilities
Feature flags with CEL targetingLicense-aware rulesDeterministic rollout_percentageNative adoption analyticsInstant kill-switch
Why it matters
Flags aware of entitlements means the PM defines what's technically-ready and what-the-customer-paid-for in the same system. Cohort logic leaves application code. Adoption metrics become a Console view, not a Jira epic.
03
Account Manager
⏱ 5 min read⚙ 5 min setup

Close a deal with a custom voucher in 30 seconds

Outcome

From 3-day legal-ops-eng ticket chain → one Console form, one voucher code, contract signed today.

The pain
A prospect asks for −20%, a 2× quota boost for 90 days, and early access to an upcoming feature. Three systems, three tickets: Stripe for the discount, app config for the quota, feature flag tool for the access. Engineering is the bottleneck for every custom deal.
The approach
Create a single COMPOSITE voucher that bundles a PRICE_DISCOUNT, an ENTITLEMENT_BOOST, and a FLAG_GRANT. Set per-effect expiry, redemption scope, and a contract-ready code. Paste into the contract. The voucher activates atomically on redemption.
Kaiten capabilities
COMPOSITE VoucherPRICE_DISCOUNTENTITLEMENT_BOOSTFLAG_GRANT (unique)Per-effect expiryBillingAdapter
Why it matters
FLAG_GRANT is the Kaiten-only differentiator — no one else binds a feature flag override to a commercial voucher. Custom deals stop being engineering tickets. Legal stops worrying about precedent because every effect has its own clock and audit trail.
04
Backend + Finance
⏱ 8 min read⚙ 30 min setup

Monetize an AI feature with token metering

Outcome

From fixed-tier plans that don't fit AI economics → per-customer, per-model, per-token metering with invoices generated automatically.

The pain
Your team shipped an AI feature. Costs are variable per token, per model, per call. Fixed-tier plans either overcharge low-usage customers or hemorrhage margin on power users. You have no system that knows both what a customer paid for AND which model they used.
The approach
Define flexible JSON entitlements that accept payloads like {model, tokens_in, tokens_out, latency_ms}. Aggregate by dimension (sum, count_distinct, avg). Wire the Kaiten BillingAdapter to push normalized metering events to your billing provider — Stripe, Lago, Chargebee, or a NoOp for self-hosted. Surface usage in an AI Cost & Usage dashboard.
Kaiten capabilities
Flexible JSON entitlementsPer-dimension aggregationAI Control PlaneBillingAdapter interfaceNormalizedBillingEventsbilling-sync-worker
Why it matters
This is the moat. LaunchDarkly doesn't know what the customer paid for. Stripe doesn't know which AI model was called. Kaiten knows both — which is exactly what the next generation of AI-powered SaaS needs to survive variable costs.
05
DevOps / Platform
⏱ 9 min read⚙ 30 min setup

Ship a new release and deploy it to the right customers — automatically

Outcome

From 6-hour multi-cluster deploy coordination → release published, webhooks orchestrate everything.

The pain
A Notion doc tracks which customer runs which version where. It's always out of date. A release means a 6-hour Slack war room with manual coordination across three clusters and 80+ enterprise customers. Onboarding a new customer is a 45-minute runbook with 20 fields to copy-paste.
The approach
Model your topology in Kaiten: Components, Releases, Deployment Zones, Instances. Publish a Release targeting a specific Zone — a RELEASE_DEPLOYMENT webhook fires your CD pipeline. CD pushes actual state back to Kaiten so the Console becomes the ground truth, not the spreadsheet.
Kaiten capabilities
Component / Release / Deployment Zone / Instance6 lifecycle webhooksState push-back APISvix deliveryK8s Operator (standalone)
Why it matters
Kaiten doesn't replace your CD — Argo, Flux, Spinnaker, whatever you run. It orchestrates them from a single source of truth. Compliance gets timestamped, immutable INSTANCE_MIGRATION events. Spreadsheets die.
06
Founder / CEO
⏱ 7 min read⚙ 20 min setup

Turn your open-source users into a prospect pipeline

Outcome

From "no idea who uses our OSS version" → funnel visibility from install to activation to qualified lead, without privacy trade-offs.

The pain
You adopted open-core. Good for adoption, great for community — invisible commercially. Is someone running your OSS in production? Are they hitting the limits? Could they become a paying customer? You have the downloads count. That's it.
The approach
Activate the privacy-first OSS telemetry built into the Kaiten SDK. Anonymized signals — install, first event, active instance — flow back to the Kaiten Console as an opt-in stream. Build a qualification funnel: signup → install → first event → active → qualified. Reach out when signals align.
Kaiten capabilities
OSS telemetry (opt-in)Privacy-first event schemaAnonymized instance trackingFunnel dashboardCRM webhook integration
Why it matters
Open-core is the dominant B2B distribution model — but nobody's built the commercial instrumentation layer for it yet. Kaiten is itself open-source: we ship the infrastructure we believe in. The OSS telemetry is the same discipline applied to your business.
07
Support / Customer Success
⏱ 4 min read⚙ 2 min setup

Extend a customer's trial without a PR

Outcome

From "let me check with Engineering" → trial extended in the time it takes to close the ticket.

The pain
A prospect needs 14 more days to close their evaluation. Today that means a Jira ticket to Engineering, a config change, a deploy. Or — worse — a DB hotfix by the on-call engineer. CS owns retention but has no self-service levers to act on it.
The approach
Issue an ENTITLEMENT_BOOST voucher scoped to the trial's expiry entitlement, with a fixed duration of 14 days. No code, no deploy. Redemption is a two-click operation in the Console. The audit trail logs who extended, when, for which customer, and why.
Kaiten capabilities
Voucher (ENTITLEMENT_BOOST)Per-instance scopeAutomatic expiryRole-based permissionsAudit trail
Why it matters
Small lever, big daily impact. This is the gateway playbook for CS teams discovering that the whole voucher system applies to their day-to-day. When they realize #3 uses the exact same mechanism for commercial deals, the light bulb goes on.
08
VP Engineering
⏱ 9 min read⚙ 4–8 week migration

Migrate from Stripe-direct pricing to flexible Kaiten licenses

Outcome

From Stripe-as-source-of-truth lock-in → Kaiten as the pricing brain, Stripe as one of many payment rails.

The pain
Your pricing logic was sealed into Stripe Products, Prices, and Coupons — with webhooks feeding application code. Every pricing change is a migration. A new deal structure breaks webhooks. You want to go multi-provider (Lago for EU VAT, Chargebee for complex quotes) but the blast radius is too big.
The approach
Introduce the BillingAdapter Go interface as a seam. Start with dual-write: Kaiten is the source of truth for License + Entitlement + Voucher; the adapter mirrors to Stripe. Emit NormalizedBillingEvents. Decommission Stripe-specific logic from application code step by step. Add a second adapter (Lago, Chargebee) when you're ready, with zero application changes.
Kaiten capabilities
BillingAdapter (Go interface)NormalizedBillingEventsbilling-sync-workerDual-write migration patternNoOp adapter (self-hosted)
Why it matters
Billing-provider-agnosticism is a firm Kaiten principle — not a feature flag. The adapter pattern means Stripe never becomes load-bearing for your pricing logic. The moat isn't "we integrate with Stripe"; it's "we never force you to." That's the story for a VP Eng who has been burned before.

Summary at a glance.

#PersonaTitleRead
01Backend DeveloperReplace hardcoded plan checks with one SDK call7 min
02Product ManagerLaunch a new feature to 10% of Pro customers — no tracking code6 min
03Account ManagerClose a deal with a custom voucher in 30 seconds5 min
04Backend + FinanceMonetize an AI feature with token metering8 min
05DevOps / PlatformShip a new release and deploy it to the right customers — automatically9 min
06Founder / CEOTurn your open-source users into a prospect pipeline7 min
07Support / Customer SuccessExtend a customer's trial without a PR4 min
08VP EngineeringMigrate from Stripe-direct pricing to flexible Kaiten licenses9 min

Pick a playbook. Ship something this week.

Kaiten is in early access. Open-source at GA. No credit card, no demo required — just a tool, the docs, and a working example for every playbook.

Request early accessRead the docs

Want the full chronological feed? Browse playbook articles on the blog →