5  Recipe: choose between minimal, redteam-ai, full and headless-agent

Field Value
Tool kailash (profiles, image matrix)
Section Getting started
Level easy
Time ~10 min (a read + one download decision)
Layer/Category CLASSIC (profile system)
Tags getting-started, profile, images, decision

5.1 Problem

You are about to download an image and the release names twelve targets — profiles × formats × architectures — and you want to pick once, correctly, by role: not too little tooling to work with, not gigabytes of lab weight you will never fire, and no desktop on a box that only an agent will ever touch. Choosing a profile IS choosing your image; make it a decision, not a guess.

5.2 Solution

Match your role to the profile; the image-matrix table then names the exact artefact and its size budget:

Profile Carries Choose it when
minimal the CORE substrate — kernel, base userland, hardening, safety defaults, desktop, CLI & menu engines; no tool categories enabled (categories are added declaratively later) you are learning the system, building a hardened base, or you know exactly which categories you will enable
redteam-ai the AI red-team lab scope — ATTACK core plus its OPS/DEFENCE pairings you are following the cookbook’s scanning and pair recipes, or doing LLM red-team engagements
full the complete live catalogue (“kali-everything” lab scope) you are running the live demonstrator, or want every category present to explore
headless-agent base + CLI only, no desktop; the qcow2 grows at first boot you are standing up an automation host or an agent-operated box (O-7 grants apply)

The budget table (from the declared build matrix — every artefact’s budget is enforced by construction):

Target (nix build .#<ref>) Profile System Budget
kailash-images-qemu-minimal / -iso-minimal minimal x86_64 ≤4 GB
kailash-images-qemu-redteam-ai / -iso-redteam-ai redteam-ai x86_64 ≤8 GB
kailash-images-qemu-full / -iso-full full x86_64 ≤10 GB
kailash-images-qemu-headless-agent / -iso-headless-agent headless-agent x86_64 ≤1.5 GB
kailash-images-…-aarch64-minimal (qemu + iso) minimal aarch64 ≤4 GB
kailash-images-…-aarch64-headless-agent (qemu + iso) headless-agent aarch64 ≤1.5 GB

Which profile for which cookbook section:

Cookbook section Fits profile Why
Scanning redteam-ai the a-02 scanner stack (garak…) rides the profile
Attack–defence pairs redteam-ai the pair thesis needs the OPS target + ATTACK probe (pair recipes touching non-shipped postures read the module per release)
Ops redteam-ai or full serving (o-04/o-02) ships with the lab scope
Administrator any — minimal is the honest start admin recipes act on the base system, not a category

On the booted system, confirm the choice the release declares:

kailash profile list

Expected output shape (one row per profile, TAB-separated):

<name>  <layers-summary>    <description>

5.3 Discussion

  • The profile is baked into the image name: a release asset reads kailash-<tag>-kailash-<profile>.<ext> — you cannot pick a profile at boot; you pick it at download (or pull the matching flake ref). That is why this recipe is a download-time decision, not a post-boot one.
  • Categories beat profiles for precision: between redteam-ai and full, prefer the former unless you specifically want the complete catalogue; anything narrower still comes as a declarative category enablement + rebuild (see Enable your first category) — the same category modules the profiles are composed from.
  • Data packs are never part of the choice: wordlists, SDR and other corpora ride opt-in kailash-data.* derivations and are excluded from every default image by construction — no profile carries them, and no profile choice can pull them in behind your back (see Refresh wordlists and data packs).
  • Safety posture is identical across profiles: the double-key lab-mode gate and the requires-target refusals are properties of the manifest rows and the base safety module, not of the profile you chose — full is not “more dangerous”, only “more present”.
  • The aarch64 picture: the arm slice is the arch strategy (x86 hosted builds, arm built locally on Apple Silicon); redteam-ai/full aarch64 rows land with the KA-36 slice-2 sweep — check the release’s own artefact table before planning an arm lab.
  • headless-agent grows: the qcow2 budget is the boot-time floor; the store grows as the agent enables categories and rebuilds. Budget the host disk, not just the download.

5.4 See also

Recipe provenance. The profile table (four profiles, one sentence each) is the guide’s profiles chapter verbatim-in-meaning; the budget table is the declared images/kailash-images-table.nix matrix (budgets MB: 4096/8192/10240/1536; aarch64 rows per the KA-36 note) — both verified 2026-10-14. The kailash profile list row shape (≤name≤TAB≤layers≤TAB≤description≤) is the landed CLI contract (kailash-packages#52 + the KA-17.2 profiles.json stub at the packages repo main); a worked boot-and-list transcript: PENDING (upkeep lane) — the release notes’ asset table is the per-release authority on which rows shipped.