tabby-k8s-exec

📖 Documentation (English / 한국어)

A Tabby terminal plugin that opens an interactive shell into a Kubernetes pod/container — like kubectl exec -it <pod> -- sh — implemented natively via the official @kubernetes/client-node SDK. No kubectl binary is required at runtime.

Features

• Native Kubernetes exec protocol — connects directly to the cluster's exec WebSocket endpoint using @kubernetes/client-node, no kubectl process spawned.
• Cascading connection picker — pick a kubeconfig context, then a namespace, then a pod, then a container, each populated live from the cluster (namespace/pod lists have a manual Refresh button; the context list is read from the local kubeconfig file).
• Clear pre-connect diagnostics — if the selected pod isn't actually running, the plugin checks its phase before attempting to connect and shows exactly why, instead of a raw transport error.
• Shell fallback — optionally try /bin/bash first and fall back to /bin/sh automatically if the container doesn't have bash.
• Multi-container pod support — the container picker is derived from the selected pod's actual containers/initContainers.

Prerequisites

• Tabby desktop app.
• A working kubeconfig file (~/.kube/config by default) with a context pointing at a reachable cluster.
• If your kubeconfig uses an exec-based auth plugin (e.g. aws eks get-token, gke-gcloud-auth-plugin, kubelogin), that binary must be installed and on PATH — this is inherent to how that kubeconfig auth style works (the same requirement kubectl itself has), not something this plugin can avoid. Static token, client-certificate, and standard OIDC auth need nothing extra.

Installation

This plugin isn't published to npm yet — install it from source:

git clone https://github.com/search5/tabby-k8s-exec.git
cd tabby-k8s-exec
npm install
npm run build
npm run install-plugin

npm run install-plugin copies the built plugin into Tabby's plugin directory (~/.config/tabby/plugins on Linux, ~/Library/Application Support/tabby/plugins on macOS, %APPDATA%\tabby\plugins on Windows). Restart Tabby afterwards to load it.

Usage

Create a new connection, choose type Kubernetes Exec, and fill in:

| Field | Description | |---|---| | Kubeconfig Path | Path to the kubeconfig file, default ~/.kube/config | | Context | Kubeconfig context to use (leave unset to use the file's current-context) | | Namespace | Namespace containing the target pod | | Pod | Pod to exec into (Refresh to list pods in the selected namespace) | | Container | Container within the pod (auto-selected if the pod has only one) | | Command | Shell/command to run, default /bin/sh |

Selecting a context does not automatically load its namespaces — click the Namespace field's Refresh button explicitly to avoid firing off a cluster API call every time you're just browsing contexts.

Known limitations

• Exec sessions may be disconnected after roughly 5 minutes of idle time behind some proxies/load balancers (an upstream @kubernetes/client-node limitation, not implemented around in v1) — reconnect via Tabby's reconnect hotkey if this happens.
• The Command field is split on whitespace only; shell-style quoting (sh -c "a ; b") isn't fully preserved.
• Only a single kubeconfig file is supported per profile (no KUBECONFIG-style multi-file merging).

Development

npm run watch          # rebuild on change
npm run install-plugin # copy dist/ into Tabby's plugin directory

License

MIT — see LICENSE.