# Wheelhouse > Learn Kubernetes by doing — a browser-based, backend-free learning playground with a living simulated cluster. Wheelhouse is the room you steer from: a living, simulated Kubernetes cluster ticks in real time — pods schedule, crash, back off, reschedule, and serve traffic — while you drive it with a real-feeling `kubectl`. No backend, no accounts; progress persists locally in the browser. Part of the AxeForging playground family (querycraft, dockyard, astrograph, wheelhouse). ## Living cluster simulation A deterministic tick engine (1 tick = 1 sim-second, pausable, 2x speed): rolling updates progress pod by pod, CrashLoopBackOff backoff actually doubles (10s to 300s), OOMKilled pods hit exit 137, and LoadBalancers go from `` to an IP over time. ## A real-feeling kubectl `get` (`-o wide|yaml|json`, `-l`, `--show-labels`), `describe`, `apply -f ` / `-f .`, `logs --tail/--previous`, `rollout status|history|undo|restart`, `scale`, `label`, `annotate`, `taint`, `cordon`/`uncordon`/`drain`, `create --dry-run=client -o yaml`, `expose`, `explain`, `get endpoints` — with did-you-mean suggestions on typos and errors phrased like the real apiserver. Unsupported syntax fails loudly; nothing fakes success. ## Fleet board and manifests workbench A radar-styled live view: nodes as berths, pods as blips (pulsing green, blinking amber, crashing red), taint and cordon badges, and traffic shown as moving lights entering through Ingress/Gateway and landing on the pods that actually serve them. A multi-file manifest editor with as-you-type linting (selector/label mismatches, apiVersion mismatches, kind typos, `:latest` warnings) and template examples, including deliberately broken CrashLoop/OOM ones. ## Course and playground 19 lessons across 6 chapters (Pods, Deployments, Services & endpoints, Ingress and Gateway API, Scheduling/taints/drain, Debugging crashes), each with a goal, a task, and a checklist that ticks live against cluster state. Sequential unlocking, points, available in English and Brazilian Portuguese. A free-mode playground offers a seeded fleet with live traffic and a flaky pod to autopsy, or an empty cluster to build from scratch. ## Links - GitHub: https://github.com/AxeForging/wheelhouse - Live site: https://wheelhouse.axeforge.io