TrueCharts: Community Helm Chart Catalog for TrueNAS Scale and Kubernetes

What TrueCharts is and who it targets

TrueCharts is a Helm Chart catalog built and maintained by a community of contributors. The project's stated purpose is to provide highly optimized Helm Charts that work together and can be deployed with any helm-compatible tool. The primary audience is self-hosters and small infrastructure teams who run TrueNAS Scale or a Kubernetes cluster and want pre-packaged, tunable application deployments rather than writing their own Helm Charts from scratch.

The project is hosted under the trueforge-org organization on GitHub and maintains a website at trueforge.org. The README links to truecharts.org as the documentation site, which reflects the catalog's history under its original name before the organization move. The Discord server and GitHub issues are the primary support channels.

TrueCharts is not an official vendor product. It is community work, and the level of support and maintenance for any individual chart depends on the volunteer who maintains it. The development model is explicitly decentralized: each chart maintainer sets their own roadmap and release speed. This gives maintainers flexibility but means that charts in the catalog vary in quality and freshness.

Repository layout and the charts directory

The repository root holds configuration files for development tooling, a charts/ directory containing the Helm Charts, and template files used across chart generation. The .pre-commit-config.yaml and Renovate configuration manage automated dependency updates and code quality checks. Helm documentation is excluded from the build via .helmdocsignore.

The charts/ directory is the core of the repository. Each subdirectory inside it corresponds to one application or service packaged as a Helm Chart. The structure follows standard Helm Chart conventions: a Chart.yaml with metadata, a values.yaml with default configuration, and a templates/ directory with Kubernetes resource definitions.

The README notes that the development process is fully distributed and agile. There is no centralized roadmap. Chart maintainers commit changes to their own charts independently, which means the charts directory is updated in many small increments rather than coordinated releases. The cr.yaml file at the root is used by the chart-releaser tool for packaging and publishing charts to the catalog.

Getting started instructions point to the website at trueforge.org rather than providing inline steps in the README. The README states that support questions should go to the FAQ and manual on the website before opening a GitHub issue.

Adding TrueCharts to TrueNAS Scale or a Kubernetes cluster

The README does not provide inline Helm CLI commands for adding the TrueCharts repository. Installation instructions are maintained on the website at trueforge.org/general/, which the README links as the manual. Users intending to add TrueCharts to a cluster should consult that page for the current procedure, since the catalog URL and installation method have changed in past migrations between organizations.

For TrueNAS Scale users, the process involves adding the TrueCharts catalog through the Applications section of the TrueNAS Scale interface rather than running helm commands directly. The website documents the current catalog URL and any Scale-specific configuration steps.

For standard Kubernetes clusters, the process follows the standard Helm repository pattern: add the repository URL with `helm repo add`, update the local index with `helm repo update`, and install specific charts. The exact repository URL to use is in the current website documentation.

The clustertool releases in the repository, the most recent being v2.0.6 from 2025-09-07, package a tooling component rather than the charts themselves. The charts directory is the primary deliverable.

The decentralized maintenance model and its trade-offs

TrueCharts describes its development as fully distributed and agile, with each chart maintainer free to set their own roadmap. This model produces a catalog with broad coverage: a large number of applications are available because any contributor can add a chart without waiting for approval from a centralized release team.

The trade-off is consistency. A catalog with hundreds of charts maintained by different contributors will have charts at different levels of maturity. Some charts may lag behind upstream application releases. Others may have broken templates or values documentation that has not been updated after an upstream breaking change. The GitHub issue tracker is the primary place where breakage gets reported, and resolution speed depends on whether the individual chart maintainer is still active.

The README says the decentralized model ensures that end users always have the latest and greatest of every chart installed, but that claim describes the intent rather than a guarantee. Checking the commit history for a specific chart in the charts/ directory gives a more reliable picture of how recently it was updated before adopting it.

AGPL-3.0 licence and the project's organizational history

TrueCharts is licensed under AGPL-3.0. For a self-hoster deploying applications through these charts, the licence has limited direct impact since you are running software for personal or internal use, not distributing a network service built on the chart templates.

AGPL-3.0 becomes relevant if you build a product that uses these chart templates as part of a hosted service and distribute that service to users over a network. In that scenario, AGPL-3.0 requires you to make the chart source available to those users. This distinction between GPL-3.0 and AGPL-3.0 is significant for commercial users. The project's website links to the full FAQ for licence questions.

The repository's organization history is visible in the current repository URL (trueforge-org/truecharts) and the presence of both truecharts.org and trueforge.org in the README. The search query "is truecharts dead" reflects a period of uncertainty during the organizational move. The last push to the repository was on 2026-09-22, confirming the project continues under the new organization.

Comparison with Bitnami charts and when to choose each

Bitnami, now maintained by Broadcom, provides a large catalog of vendor-backed Helm Charts. The key difference from TrueCharts is organizational model. Bitnami charts are maintained by a dedicated team at a commercial company with formal release processes and security scanning. TrueCharts charts are maintained by community volunteers under a distributed model.

Bitnami charts are generally a better fit for teams that need a chart with a published vulnerability disclosure process, regular security updates tied to a vendor's release cycle, and support contracts for production deployments. Bitnami also maintains charts for a wider range of infrastructure software that TrueCharts may not cover.

TrueCharts is a better fit for self-hosters who prioritize breadth of catalog coverage, TrueNAS Scale compatibility, and tunability. The community model gives TrueCharts faster coverage of niche applications that Bitnami would not prioritize. The two catalogs are not mutually exclusive: a Kubernetes cluster can use charts from both simultaneously.

Editorial conclusion

TrueCharts is the right catalog for self-hosters and small teams who run TrueNAS Scale or a Kubernetes cluster and want a large selection of pre-packaged Helm Charts that are designed to work together. It is not the right choice for teams who need charts with official vendor support, audit trails, or certified security scanning, since TrueCharts is community-maintained without those guarantees. Before adopting the catalog for a production deployment, verify that the specific chart you need is actively maintained by checking its last commit history in the charts/ directory. The AGPL-3.0 licence is worth reviewing if you plan to build software on top of these charts for distribution, since AGPL-3.0 has network-service copyleft requirements that differ from permissive alternatives.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Official documentation
2. Official README
3. Project repository
4. Release notes