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[Seeder](https://github.com/harvester/seeder) is available as a plugin for harvester.

I haven't used it as an addon, but maybe @great-bear-19718 can speak to that more.

However, the only example I see of seeder is for managing harvester clusters from an initial separate k8s cluster [like here](https://github.com/harvester/harvester/wiki/Provision-VM%E2%80%90based-Harvester-Clusters-with-Seeder).

When I install the seeder addon, I don't see any inventories.metal.harvesterhci.io for my existing metal, and the cluster resource that does exist does not appear to have any values set.

Correct. Once you have your k8s cluster and you've installed seeder to it, you're expected to define AddressPool and Inventory resources. Once those are done, you can define a Cluster resource and seeder will drive the provisioning of your Harvester cluster.

Is seeder in a place where I can start trying to self manage my harvester cluster with it, or should I give it some more time?

We use it in our own lab and it works great.

If I already have a harvester cluster can I define my existing resources to import them into the seeder cluster? That's where my main confusion is stemming from when using it as an addon inside harvester. My assumption is yes, and I suppose I could stage a test to find out.

currently the addon allows out-of-band management of harvester nodes in the cluster it is deployed on

So the embedded addon deployment of seeder can only facilitate out of band management of existing nodes, and the non-embedded seeder can provision external harvester clusters? It would be nice if the embedded addon deployment of seeder could do both out-of-band management on existing nodes, and provision new nodes into the existing harvester cluster. Is that a planned WIP? It seems like the existing expansion strategy for a harvester cluster is via JOIN mode; it would be nice if, after the initial node is stood up and seeder installed, the cluster could be expanded entirely via the addon seeder rather than using a separate external seeder to manage inventory.

yeah there is work in progress to open up seeder to do multi cluster provisioning etc.. we use it internally but its still early days