As part of the effort to integrate Kiali-specific Gevals into the kubernetes-mcp-server CI pipeline, we need to provide a Make target and workflow that installs Istio and Kiali into a Kind cluster.

The Kubernetes MCP team has Gevals running in CI and will soon enable tool-specific workflows. To support Kiali, we must prepare the installation steps so they can be reused when running evals against changes to Kiali’s toolset.

Requirements

• Create a Make target that installs Istio and Kiali into a Kind cluster.
• Reuse existing actions from our repo where possible:
  https://github.com/kiali/kiali/tree/master/.github/workflows
  (most of the logic can be copy-and-paste since we already use Kind).
• Provide a clean workflow that can later be integrated into the Kiali-specific Gevals workflow in the kubernetes-mcp-server repo.
• Ensure the workflow is easily callable from CI (e.g., /run-gevals).

Context

• The Kubernetes MCP team is preparing core Gevals CI support.
• Once ready, we will collaborate to integrate a Kiali-specific workflow for running evals whenever Kiali’s tooling changes.
• This task prepares the necessary installation steps for that integration.

slack conversation https://redhat.enterprise.slack.com/archives/C08LQ6ZVBHR/p1763753925105689