Initium is a single static Rust binary (~5 MB, built FROM scratch) that handles the six things initContainers actually do: wait for dependencies, run migrations, seed databases, render config templates, fetch secrets, and exec commands.

What it gives you over bash:

Exponential backoff with jitter on all network ops (not sleep 5 && retry) Automatic secret redaction in logs (catches token, password, api_key, auth patterns) PSA restricted compatible out of the box — non-root, read-only filesystem, all capabilities dropped Declarative database seeding with cross-table references and idempotency Zero CVEs. No OS packages. No shell. Nothing to scan. It supports PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite. Config via CLI flags or INITIUM_* env vars. Multi-arch (amd64 + arm64).

Apache 2.0. Written in Rust. https://github.com/KitStream/initium