I'm trying to figure out the pieces and how to fit them together for having a pod be able to control aspects of a deployment, like scaling. I'm thinking I need to set up a service account for it, but I'm not finding the information on how to link it all together, and then how to get the pod to use the service account. I'll be writing this in python, which might add to the complexity of how to use the service account
Try to set up Horizontal Pod Autpscaler.
The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler automatically scales the number of pods in a replication controller, deployment, replica set or stateful set based on observed CPU utilization (or, with custom metrics support, on some other application-provided metrics). Horizontal Pod Autoscaling does not apply to objects that can’t be scaled, for example, DaemonSets.
The Horizontal Pod Autoscaler is implemented as a Kubernetes API resource and a controller. The resource determines the behavior of the controller. The controller periodically adjusts the number of replicas in a replication controller or deployment to match the observed average CPU utilization to the target specified by user.
Documentations: hpa-setup, autoscaling.