openk8s

A terminal UI for Kubernetes.

This project is vibe-coded and untested. No guarantees it works. Built as an exercise to see how far AI-assisted development can go for a k9s-like terminal UI. Use at your own risk.

What is this?

openk8s is a keyboard-driven TUI for browsing and managing Kubernetes clusters, inspired by k9s. It aims to be a simpler, opinionated alternative — three panes, no mouse dependency (though clickable), and direct access to the most common kubectl operations without leaving the terminal.

Prerequisites

| Tool | Required | Notes | |------|----------|-------| | kubectl | yes | >= 1.36.1, must be configured with a valid kubeconfig | | helm | no | Enables HelmRelease management | | bun | yes | Required at runtime to execute the app |

Installation

npm (requires bun at runtime)

npm install -g openk8s
openk8s

bunx (no install needed)

bunx openk8s

From source

git clone https://github.com/leon19/openk8s
cd openk8s
npm install
bun run dev

Quick start

openk8s

The app scans your kubeconfig, picks your current context, and loads the cluster's resources. Use c to switch contexts, n to switch namespaces.

Layout

┌─────────────┬──────────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│   Kinds     │     Resources        │    Inspector     │
│             │                      │                  │
│   pods     ›│   nginx-7fb96c...   ││   Summary tab    │
│   services ›│   redis-5d4f8b...   ││   Status: Ready  │
│   configmaps│   api-6c9b8...      ││   Age: 2h        │
│   ...       │   ...               ││   ...            │
│             │                      │                  │
│ [C] cluster │  / filter            │  [s] [y] [v] [i] │
│ [N] ns      │                     │                   │
└─────────────┴──────────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Three resizable panes: resource kinds (left), resources (center), inspector (right, hidden when width < 110). Tab/Shift+Tab cycles focus. Inspector has four tabs: Summary, YAML, Events, Describe.

Keybindings

Global

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | Tab / Shift+Tab | Cycle pane focus right / left | | c | Switch cluster context | | n | Switch namespace | | r | Refresh current view | | Escape | Close overlay / exit filter mode | | Ctrl+C | Quit |

Navigation

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | Up / k | Move up in current pane | | Down / j | Move down in current pane | | Left / h | Move to previous pane | | Right | Move to next pane / inspector tab |

Resource pane

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | / | Enter filter mode (type to filter resources) | | Space | Toggle multi-select on current resource | | l | View streaming logs | | x | Open interactive shell (kubectl exec) | | e | Edit resource (kubectl edit / helm upgrade --reuse-values) | | d | Delete resource (supports batch delete) | | f | Port-forward overlay | | Shift+S | Scale replicas | | Shift+R | Rollout restart | | b | Helm rollback (HelmReleases only) | | Shift+U | Helm upgrade (HelmReleases only, interactive) |

Inspector pane

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | s | Summary tab | | y | YAML tab (press again to copy YAML) | | v | Events tab | | i | Describe tab |

Logs overlay

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | Up / Down / k / j | Scroll by 3 lines | | c | Pick container (multi-container pods) | | p | Toggle previous logs | | t | Set tail count | | s | Set since duration (e.g. 1h, 30m) | | / | Search within logs | | n / Shift+N | Next / previous search match | | Escape | Exit search → exit input → close overlay | | Enter | Confirm input / search |

Port-forward overlay

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | Up / Down / k / j | Navigate ports | | Enter | Start forwarding on selected port | | x | Stop active forward on selected port | | Escape | Close overlay |

Scale dialog

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | type | Enter replica count | | Enter | Apply scale | | Escape | Cancel |

Delete confirm overlay

| Key | Action | |-----|--------| | Enter | Confirm deletion | | Escape | Cancel |

Features

• Context & namespace switching — browse any cluster in your kubeconfig, any namespace
• Resource browsing — auto-discovers API resource kinds and lists resources with status, age, and summary; curates a sensible default ordering
• Log streaming — kubectl logs --follow with search, container picker, tail count, since duration, and previous logs toggle; Deployments/StatefulSets use --all-pods
• Shell — drop into a container via kubectl exec -it sh (renderer suspends, resumes on exit)
• Edit — kubectl edit for resources, temp-file + helm upgrade --reuse-values for HelmReleases (opens $EDITOR)
• Port-forward — declare ports, start/stop forwards inline with live status
• Scale — set replica count for Deployments, StatefulSets, ReplicaSets
• Rollout restart — one-key restart for Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets
• Delete — single or batch (via multi-select with Space), uses kubectl delete or helm uninstall
• Secret reveal — click [reveal] inline to decode secret values and [copy] to clipboard
• YAML copy — view full YAML in inspector, press y again to copy
• Metrics — pod and node CPU/memory usage when metrics-server is installed
• Helm releases — list, rollback, and upgrade Helm releases (injected as a resource kind when helm is available)
• Multi-select — select multiple resources for batch operations (delete)
• Keyboard-first — all actions accessible via keyboard; mouse also supported
• Persistent state — last active context and namespace saved to ~/.config/openk8s/state.json

Clipboard

Copy actions (YAML, secret values) use:

• Linux (Wayland): wl-copy
• Linux (X11): xclip -selection clipboard
• macOS: pbcopy

A toast notification is shown on unsupported platforms.

Polling

The app auto-refreshes on three intervals:

| What | Interval | |------|----------| | Cluster state | 30s | | Resource list & detail | 5s | | Metrics | 15s |

Press r to force a manual refresh at any time.

License

MIT