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hpalag

confirmedKubernetes · minikubeCluster & infrastructureJuly 8, 2026

the question

How fast does the Kubernetes HPA actually react to a CPU spike?

what came out

A median ~56 seconds -- ~40x longer than a pod takes to start -- because the delay is the metrics-scrape plus sync sampling loop, not pod startup. It scales only on the first scraped sample above target. Real minikube, pre-registered, independently verified.

method & receipts

  • Result: confirmed
  • Pre-registered the prediction was written down and committed before the run.
  • Reproducible one script re-runs the whole thing from scratch.
  • Independently reviewed an adversarial review pass, kept in the repo.
  • Machine-readable claims every reported number, in a checkable file.
  • Tested — a correctness/benchmark suite ships alongside the code.

→ read the code and re-run it

github.com/v-code01/hpalag