aku

Another K8s UI

A terminal UI for managing Kubernetes clusters, built with Bubble Tea.

Features

Resource browsing

• Automatic discovery of any CRD or API resource not covered by built-in plugins
• Disambiguation of same-name resources across API groups (e.g. certificates [cert-manager.io/v1])
• Helm release management with values editing, rollback, and chart switching
• Drill-down navigation between related resources (deployment → replicaset → pods → containers)

Views

• YAML view with syntax highlighting (managedFields stripped)
• Describe view with events and environment variable resolution
• Live log streaming with time range presets, container selection, and autoscroll
• Log syntax highlighting (JSON, log levels, IPs, URLs, UUIDs, timestamps, paths, key=value)
• Split panes with independent namespace, filter, and cursor per pane
• Zoom to full-screen any split or detail panel

Operations

• Edit resources in your $EDITOR with automatic retry on validation errors
• Exec into containers
• Ephemeral debug containers (pods and nodes, with optional privileged mode)
• Port forwarding with live status tracking
• Update container images across workloads
• Scale deployments, statefulsets, and replicasets
• Rollout restart for deployments and pods
• Multi-select resources for bulk delete
• Helm values editing, rollback to any revision, and chart reference updates

Navigation

• Vim-style keybindings with multi-key sequences (gg, gp, gd, etc.)
• Fuzzy resource picker (:) and namespace picker (Ctrl+n)
• Regex search (/) and filter (Ctrl+/) in both list and detail views
• Column sorting by name, namespace, age, status, or kind
• Fully customizable keybindings via YAML

Installation

From GitHub releases

Download a prebuilt binary from the releases page.

From source

go install github.com/aohoyd/aku@latest

Build locally

git clone https://github.com/aohoyd/aku.git
cd aku
make build

Usage

aku                                    # default kubeconfig and context
aku --context staging                  # specific context
aku -n kube-system                     # specific namespace
aku -r pods,deploy                     # open with specific resources
aku -r pods -d logs                    # open pods with log panel
aku -r certificates.cert-manager.io/v1 # qualified resource (when names collide)
aku --kubeconfig /path/to/kubeconfig   # custom kubeconfig path

Flag	Short	Description
--kubeconfig		Path to kubeconfig file
--context		Kubeconfig context to use
--namespace	-n	Kubernetes namespace
--resource	-r	Resources to display (repeatable)
--details	-d	Open detail panel (y/yaml, d/describe, l/logs)

aku reads your kubeconfig from $KUBECONFIG or ~/.kube/config.

Configuration

All configuration files are optional. aku uses sensible defaults when no config files are present.

~/.config/aku/
├── config.yaml    # Application settings
├── keymap.yaml    # Custom keybindings
└── theme.yaml     # Color theme

The directory follows the XDG Base Directory specification ($XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aku/).

config.yaml

# Helm chart references for values editing
charts:
  my-namespace:
    my-release: oci://registry.example.com/charts/my-chart

# Debug container settings
debug:
  image: busybox:latest    # default
  command: ["sh"]          # default

# Log viewer settings
logs:
  buffer_size: 10000       # max lines to buffer (default)

# API timeout for async operations (describe, helm, log stream)
api:
  timeout_seconds: 5       # default
  heartbeat_seconds: 5     # cluster health check interval (default)

keymap.yaml

bindings:
  # Add a custom binding
  - key: "ctrl+l"
    help: "logs"
    command: "view-logs-focused"
    scope: "resources"
    for: ["pods"]
    visible: true

  # Multi-key sequence
  - key: "g"
    scope: "resources"
    keys:
      - key: "i"
        help: "ingresses"
        command: "goto-ingresses"

Available scopes: resources, details (matches all detail views), yaml, describe, logs.

theme.yaml

ui:
  accent: "#7C3AED"
  muted: "#6B7280"
  error: "#EF4444"
  warning: "#F59E0B"

status:
  running: "#10B981"
  failed: "#EF4444"
  pending: "#F59E0B"

syntax:
  key: "#60A5FA"
  string: "#34D399"
  number: "#F472B6"

Key Bindings

Global

Key	Action
q	Quit / close overlay
Ctrl+n	Namespace picker
:	Resource picker
?	Help overlay
y	YAML view
d	Describe view
e	Edit resource
Z	Toggle zoom
Ctrl+r	Reload all
/	Search (regex)
| / Ctrl+/	Filter (regex)

Resource List

Key	Action
j/k	Cursor up/down
gg / G	Top / bottom
Enter	Drill down / open detail
Tab / Shift+Tab	Next / prev split pane
Space	Toggle select
Ctrl+a	Select all
Ctrl+d	Delete selected
g + p/d/s/v/c/n	Go to pods/deployments/secrets/services/configmaps/namespaces
h + p/d/s/v/c	Open split: pods/deployments/secrets/services/configmaps
S + n/N/a/s	Sort by name/namespace/age/status

Detail Panel

Key	Action
h / Left	Back to list
w	Toggle word wrap
H/L	Scroll left/right
x	Resolve env variables
r	Refresh

Logs View

Key	Action
a	Toggle autoscroll
s	Toggle syntax highlighting
c	Select container
t	Time range
Enter	Insert marker

Resource-Specific

Key	Resource	Action
l	Pods, Containers	View logs
s	Deployments, StatefulSets, ReplicaSets	Scale replicas
i	Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets	Set image
R	Deployments, Pods	Rollout restart
R	Helm releases	Rollback
C	Helm releases	Set chart
pf	Pods, Containers	Port forward
ss	Pods, Containers	Exec
sd	Pods, Containers, Nodes	Debug container
sp	Pods, Containers, Nodes	Privileged debug

Name

The name is a reference to Aku from Samurai Jack — and also stands for Another K8s UI.

License

MIT