It's a cut-down version of kubernetes. Author left the basic features and removed most things that are oriented to heavier users or that required more resources

It's a cut-down version of kubernetes. Author left the basic features and removed most things that are oriented to heavier users or that required more resources than they wanted to spare. I assume the goal is to make k3s into something light where you can deploy small projects instead of using something like swarm/dokku. He has also removed etcd and replaced it with sqlite which seems like a nice way to reduce resource requirements.