slimtoolkit/slim · error

malformed Kubernetes workload name

Error message

malformed Kubernetes workload name

What it means

KubernetesTarget.WorkloadName() parses the Workload field as a "<kind>/<name>" string (e.g. "deployment/my-app") and returns this ad-hoc error when the string does not split into exactly two non-empty parts — i.e. the name portion is missing or the value contains extra slashes.

Source

Thrown at pkg/app/master/config/config.go:289

type KubernetesOptions struct {
	Target         KubernetesTarget
	TargetOverride KubernetesTargetOverride

	Manifests  []string
	Kubeconfig string
}

type KubernetesTarget struct {
	Workload  string
	Namespace string
	Container string
}

func (t *KubernetesTarget) WorkloadName() (string, error) {
	parts := strings.Split(t.Workload, "/")
	if len(parts) != 2 || len(parts[1]) == 0 {
		return "", errors.New("malformed Kubernetes workload name")
	}

	return parts[1], nil
}

type KubernetesTargetOverride struct {
	Image string
}

func (ko KubernetesOptions) HasTargetSet() bool {
	return ko.Target.Workload != ""
}

View on GitHub (pinned to 81940d17fa)

Solutions

1. Format the target as "<kind>/<name>", e.g. "deployment/my-app" or "pod/my-pod"
2. Move the namespace out of the workload string into the namespace/target field
3. Trim stray slashes and re-check the value passed to the --target flag or config

Example fix

// before
KubernetesTarget{Workload: "my-app"}
// after
KubernetesTarget{Workload: "deployment/my-app"}

func validWorkload(w string) bool {
	parts := strings.Split(w, "/")
	return len(parts) == 2 && len(parts[1]) > 0
}

// Go
if name, err := target.WorkloadName(); err != nil {
	// reject config early: workload must be "kind/name"
}

When it happens

Trigger: Setting the k8s target workload to a bare name without a kind prefix ("my-app"), an empty name ("deployment/"), or a value with more than one slash ("deploy/ns/my-app").

Common situations: Users pasting just the pod/deployment name from kubectl output; including a namespace in the workload value instead of using the namespace field; copy-paste with trailing slashes.

Understand the failure class

• Parsing and encoding errors: unexpected token, malformed input — why parsers reject input and how to find the real culprit.

Related errors

• cannot detect host port
• could not decode command %q: %w
• No global params
• Pod terminated
• Pod not running

AI-assisted analysis of slimtoolkit/slim@81940d17fa (2026-08-31). Data as JSON: /api/errors/4e02c1aacfc34798. Report an issue: GitHub.