Deployment as a standalone non-kubernetes service not possible ?

[zemanel]

I have been looking for similar tools and was pretty happy to find this project.

The README states that

The operator is cloud agnostic and can be run either in a Kubernetes cluster or as a standalone service.
When deployed in Kubernetes, the operator will also deploy a CRD to enable configuration of the sync service through native Kubernetes resources. When deployed as a standalone service, configuration is done through a single YAML file.

I took from this that it would be possible to run the service in a non Kubernetes environment, but

a) i haven't managed to do so as i always get errors regarding k8 control plane

2026-07-15T16:11:27+02:00	INFO	Starting Controller	{"controller": "vaultsecretsync", "controllerGroup": "vaultsecretsync.lestak.sh", "controllerKind": "VaultSecretSync"}
2026-07-15T16:11:27+02:00	INFO	controller-runtime.metrics	Starting metrics server
2026-07-15T16:11:27+02:00	INFO	controller-runtime.metrics	Serving metrics server	{"bindAddress": ":9080", "secure": false}
2026-07-15T16:11:27+02:00	ERROR	controller-runtime.source.EventHandler	failed to get informer from cache	{"error": "failed to get API group resources: unable to retrieve the complete list of server APIs: vaultsecretsync.lestak.sh/v1alpha1: Get \"https://127.0.0.1:6443/apis/vaultsecretsync.lestak.sh/v1alpha1\": dial tcp 127.0.0.1:6443: connect: connection refused"}
sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/internal/source.(*Kind[...]).Start.func1.1
    /Users/jose.moreira@new10.com/go/pkg/mod/sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime@v0.18.4/pkg/internal/source/kind.go:76
k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/wait.loopConditionUntilContext.func1
    /Users/jose.moreira@new10.com/go/pkg/mod/k8s.io/apimachinery@v0.30.3/pkg/util/wait/loop.go:53
k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/wait.loopConditionUntilContext
    /Users/jose.moreira@new10.com/go/pkg/mod/k8s.io/apimachinery@v0.30.3/pkg/util/wait/loop.go:54
k8s.io/apimachinery/pkg/util/wait.PollUntilContextCancel
    /Users/jose.moreira@new10.com/go/pkg/mod/k8s.io/apimachinery@v0.30.3/pkg/util/wait/poll.go:33
sigs.k8s.io/controller-runtime/pkg/internal/source.(*Kind[...]).Start.func1

by using

queue:
  type: memory
events:
  enabled: true
  port: 8080
operator:
  enabled: false

b) looking at the code there only seems to be one backend type, kubernetes.

So, does "standalone service" still running VSS in K8s and if so, as a nitpick, is it possible to make it more clear in the docs and/or would a non k8s implementation be possible ?

Thanks!