What are CDEvents?

CDEvents (Continuous Delivery Events) is an open specification initiated by the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF). CDEvents defines a standardized JSON format for describing events in software delivery pipelines — deployments, builds, tests, incidents, and environment changes. The specification enables different CI/CD tools to communicate using a common event language, eliminating proprietary data silos.

CDviz is built natively on CDEvents: all data stored and visualized by CDviz conforms to the CDEvents specification. Events are structured JSON objects with a context block (event type, timestamp, source, version) and a subject block (what the event describes and its content).

CDviz vs CDEvents

CDEvents is a specification — an open standard for describing events in software delivery pipelines, initiated by the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF). It defines a JSON schema for event types like dev.cdevents.service.deployed, dev.cdevents.build.finished, etc.

CDviz is a platform that implements the CDEvents specification. CDviz collects CDEvents from your CI/CD tools, stores them in PostgreSQL with TimescaleDB, and visualizes them in Grafana dashboards. Think of CDEvents as the language and CDviz as the system that speaks it.

Other tools can also produce or consume CDEvents — CDviz is one implementation, not the only one. The CDEvents ecosystem includes CLIs, SDKs, and integrations for GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Tekton, and more.

CDEvent Structure

A CDEvent is a JSON object with a specific structure. Here is an example of a service.deployed event:

{
  "context": {
    "version": "0.4.1",
    "id": "a2f2b6f0-8e0d-4b4c-9a6d-8f3e5f7e8f5d",
    "source": "/my-app/my-pipeline",
    "type": "dev.cdevents.service.deployed.0.1.1",
    "timestamp": "2025-07-03T10:00:00Z"
  },
  "subject": {
    "id": "my-service",
    "source": "/my-app/my-pipeline",
    "type": "service",
    "content": {
      "environment": {
        "id": "production"
      },
      "artifactId": "pkg:oci/my-app@sha256:1234567890abcdef"
    }
  }
}

Key Fields

• context.type: The type of the event. This is a namespaced string that identifies the event, such as dev.cdevents.service.deployed.0.1.1.
• subject.id: The unique identifier of the subject of the event, such as the name of a service or a build ID.
• subject.content: A JSON object that contains the details of the event.

For a complete list of all the available event types and their fields, please refer to the CDEvents specification.

Guidelines

You can see some opinionated rules to create CDEvents at Transformers & CDEvents Rules.

CDEvents ecosystem

Tools that emit or consume CDEvents — compatible with CDviz as sources or consumers. The CDEvents specification is implemented or being integrated by many SDLC tools.

CI/CD pipelines

Tool	CDEvents role	Notes
Jenkins	producer	CDEvents plugin emits events for builds and deployments
Tekton	producer	Native CDEvents emission from pipeline runs and task runs
Spinnaker	producer	CDEvents integration for deployment pipeline events
Argo CD	producer	Emits CDEvents on application sync and deployment events

GitOps & continuous delivery

Tool	CDEvents role	Notes
Flux	producer	Emits CDEvents via notification-controller for reconciliation and deployment events
Keptn	producer / consumer	Lifecycle toolkit emits and reacts to CDEvents for deployment observability

Testing

Tool	CDEvents role	Notes
Testkube	producer	Emits CDEvents on test execution events
Tracetest	producer	Emits CDEvents for trace-based test results

Artifact registries & supply chain

Tool	CDEvents role	Notes
Harbor	producer	Emits CDEvents for artifact push, scan, and replication events
GUAC	consumer	Graph for Understanding Artifact Composition — ingests CDEvents to build software supply chain graphs

CLIs & utilities

CDEvents CLI

brunseba/cdevents-tools

CLI tool for generating and transmitting CDEvents from CI/CD pipelines. Useful for instrumenting pipelines that don't have a native CDviz integration yet.

JReleaser CDEvents extension

JReleaser extension that emits CDEvents on release workflow events. Compatible with cdviz-collector as a source.

Related standards

• Semantic conventions for CI/CD — OpenTelemetry
• CDEvents specification — the open standard CDviz is built on