What are the phases of a Pod's lifecycle?

The Pod's phase is a high-level summary. Pending means the API accepted it but it isn't fully running yet — it may be waiting to be scheduled, pulling images, or running init containers. Running means it's bound to a node and at least one container is up. Succeeded and Failed are terminal (all containers exited, 0 vs non-zero). Unknown usually means the node stopped reporting. Underneath, each container has its own state — Waiting (e.g., ImagePullBackOff, CrashLoopBackOff), Running, or Terminated — and readiness/liveness/startup probes govern traffic and restarts: readiness gates whether the pod receives Service traffic, liveness triggers restarts, startup protects slow-booting apps from premature liveness failures. Graceful shutdown matters too: on deletion the pod gets a SIGTERM, a terminationGracePeriod to drain, then SIGKILL.