README.md

July 13, 2026 · View on GitHub

Klustr

A native Kubernetes desktop client that installs nothing in your cluster.

macOS · brew tap sametkum/klustr && brew install klustr
Arch / CachyOS / Manjaro · paru -S klustr-bin
Debian / Ubuntu · sudo apt install ./klustr_*_amd64.deb (download first)

other install options

_{▶ Watch the full-quality video}

What is Klustr?

Klustr is a cross-platform Kubernetes desktop client built with Wails (Go + native webview) and React. It uses your existing ~/.kube/config and speaks the standard Kubernetes API directly — nothing is deployed in the cluster. Drop the binary in, point at any context, and you're looking at a live view of everything you have permission to see — built-in resources, full RBAC with a subject → effective-permissions review, Custom Resources (CRDs), Helm releases, Argo CD Applications, Flux CD reconcilers, Gateway API routes, and cert-manager certificates included. No extra logins, no argocd, flux or helm CLI required — only your kubeconfig.

Features

🔌 Pure client. No CRDs, no in-cluster components — works with whatever your kubeconfig already grants.
🔁 Live everywhere. client-go informers, never polled.
🌐 Multi-context aggregation. View 2+ clusters in one table, per-context status pings with latency in the status bar.
👥 Context groups & tags. Named multi-context groups; color tags on the top bar so you always know which environment you're touching.
📋 Every built-in resource. Workloads, networking, storage, config, admission, autoscaling, and the full RBAC set under a dedicated Access Control sidebar group.
🔎 Access Review. Subject → effective-permissions GVR × verb matrix with the binding → role chain behind every ✓, wildcards and cluster-admin flagged. Live, no --as impersonation, no extra API traffic.
🧩 Custom Resources (CRDs). Auto-discovered on connect, grouped by API group, watch-backed.
⎈ Helm. First-class Helm v3: install / upgrade / rollback / uninstall with a dry-run preview before any change, plus repo management and chart search.
🚢 Argo CD. Sync, Refresh, Rollback and cascade-aware Delete through the Kubernetes API — no argocd-server, no argocd CLI, no Argo login.
🚀 Flux CD. Kustomization · HelmRelease · GitRepository · HelmRepository · OCIRepository · Bucket · Provider · Alert · Receiver — each with Reconcile + Suspend/Resume buttons that hit the standard Flux annotations, no flux CLI.
🌉 Gateway API. Typed informers; listener table, per-rule match → backend → weight matrix and RouteParentStatus so a misrouted parent or RefNotPermitted backend is one click away. Vendor-neutral.
🔐 cert-manager. Certificates, Issuers / ClusterIssuers, and the full issuance chain — CertificateRequest → Order → Challenge — with ready/expiry status and a drill-down across the chain. One-click Renew, no cmctl CLI.
🕸️ Istio. VirtualServices, DestinationRules and PeerAuthentications, watch-backed; the served API version is read from the discovered CRD rather than hardcoded.
🌳 Karpenter. NodePools and NodeClaims with provisioning status, surfaced automatically when the karpenter.sh CRDs are present.
📜 Logs. Stern-style multi-pod streaming with per-pod ANSI colors, follow, save and regex.
🖥️ In-app exec. SPDY shell into any container.
🐚 Node shell. Root shell on any node via a temporary privileged nsenter pod that's removed when the session ends — no SSH, nothing pre-installed.
🚧 Cordon & drain. One-click cordon/uncordon and a live-progress drain that evicts through the Eviction API (PDB-aware, skips DaemonSet & mirror pods).
🔧 YAML edit. Monaco editor with a server-side dry-run diff before apply.
🚀 Scale, restart, pause/resume. Replica controls, one-click rolling restart, inline pause/resume, HPA min/max editable inline.
📐 In-place pod resize. Change a running container's CPU / memory requests and limits via the pods/resize subresource — no pod recreation; shows the live resize status (Deferred / Infeasible).
⏪ Rollout history & rollback. Side-by-side template diff and one-click revert on Deployments / StatefulSets / DaemonSets.
🔄 Port-forwarding. Suggested local ports, persistent header indicator, click-to-open in browser.
🗺️ Cluster overviews. CPU / memory / pod donuts, workloads health, recent warnings — single-cluster or aggregated.
🧭 Cross-resource navigation. Drill from workload to pod to node and back.
🎨 Themes & shortcuts. Command palette (⌘K), pod search (⌘P), namespace search (⌘N), keyboard cheatsheet (?).

Screenshots

Every shot is captured live from real clusters. Each is rendered in a different theme so the pack doubles as a tour of Klustr's themes — see docs/screenshots/ for the full set including light variants.



Aggregated pods — two clusters in one table, `Context` column, status pill variety	Cluster overview — CPU / memory / pod donuts, live warnings feed

Node usage — CPU / memory bars and pressure conditions per node	KEDA HPA — autoscaler detail with the cron trigger humanized

Helm Upgrade — values editor, Wait / Atomic options, dry-run preview	YAML edit — Monaco editor with a server-side diff before apply

Argo CD — Sync / Health pills, per-row Sync & Refresh without `argocd` CLI	Flux CD — Kustomization conditions, source & applied revision, Reconcile / Suspend

cert-manager — certificate readiness, issuer, SANs and the issuance chain	Gateway API — HTTPRoutes with parents, hostnames, accepted pills

Pod diagnosis — a card explaining why a pod is unhealthy (CrashLoopBackOff, OOMKilled…)	Aggregated logs — multi-pod stream, per-pod colors, level highlighting

Read-only mode — a per-context safety switch that blocks every mutation	Terminal — embedded shell drawer wired to the active context

Install

macOS (Apple Silicon)

The release build is signed with a Developer ID Application certificate and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper opens it directly — even offline.

Homebrew

brew tap sametkum/klustr
brew install klustr

After the initial brew tap, future updates are just brew upgrade klustr (or brew upgrade for everything), and brew search klustr / brew info klustr start finding it.

Manual

Download the latest darwin-arm64 tarball from the Releases page, then:

tar -xzf klustr-*-darwin-arm64.tar.gz
mv klustr.app /Applications/
open /Applications/klustr.app

Linux (amd64)

The Linux binary links against webkit2gtk-4.1 + gtk-3. Ubuntu 24.04+, Fedora 39+, Arch and most other modern distros ship those runtime libraries by default; on Ubuntu 22.04 install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 libgtk-3-0 first.

Arch / CachyOS / Manjaro / Endeavour (AUR)

paru -S klustr-bin
# or
yay -S klustr-bin

The klustr-bin PKGBUILD uses the prebuilt release tarball, so install completes in seconds. paru -Syu keeps it up to date.

Debian / Ubuntu (.deb)

The .deb pulls in the runtime dependencies automatically and registers a klustr desktop entry.

VERSION="$(curl -fsSL https://api.github.com/repos/SametKUM/klustr/releases/latest | grep -oP '"tag_name":\s*"\K[^"]+')"
DEB="klustr_${VERSION#v}_amd64.deb"
curl -LO "https://github.com/SametKUM/klustr/releases/download/${VERSION}/${DEB}"
sudo apt install "./${DEB}"

Manual (tarball)

Download the latest linux-amd64 tarball from the Releases page, then:

tar -xzf klustr-*-linux-amd64.tar.gz
install -Dm755 klustr ~/.local/bin/klustr
klustr

Windows

Windows builds will be attached to releases once they've been validated. Until then, please build from source — see Build from source.

Quick start

Klustr reads ~/.kube/config at launch.
On first run, pick a context — or check two or more to view them aggregated as one cluster. Save a recurring selection as a named group for one-click reconnect, and toggle Auto-connect on a card to pin it as the default.
Browse via the sidebar, click any row for a detail dialog, use ⌘K to open the command palette, or ⌘P to search pods by name. The header's Disconnect button drops you back to the picker at any time.

Documentation

Task-focused guides live in docs/guide/:

Getting started — contexts, namespaces, read-only mode
Multi-context & aggregated mode — many clusters as one, groups, tags
Credential helpers — aws-vault and other exec plugins under a GUI launch
Workloads & debugging — logs, exec, port-forward, node shell
Helm · GitOps: Argo CD & Flux · Gateway API · Custom Resources

Build from source

mise install     # installs Go, Node, Wails CLI pinned in .mise.toml
wails dev        # hot-reload dev session

# or a production build for your host platform
wails build -trimpath -clean

Architecture (short version)

Layer	Choice
Desktop	Wails v2 (Go + native webview)
Backend	Go 1.26 + `client-go` (typed clientset + dynamic) + `sigs.k8s.io/gateway-api`
Frontend	React 19 · TypeScript · Vite
UI	Tailwind CSS · shadcn/ui
State	Zustand (real-time) · TanStack Query (mutations only)
Tables	TanStack Table
Live data	`client-go` informers → Wails events → Zustand → React

Full design notes, conventions and the "add a new resource kind" recipe live in CLAUDE.md.

Roadmap

Contributing

Bug reports and focused pull requests are welcome.

Read CLAUDE.md first — it's the architecture + conventions contract.
Use Conventional Commits (feat:, fix:, refactor: …) and prefer small, logically scoped commits.

Before opening a PR, run:

go test klustr/internal/... && go vet ./...
cd frontend && npm test && npm run lint && npm run typecheck

New user-facing features should include a screenshot or short clip in the PR description.

Full guide: CONTRIBUTING.md. Bug reports go through the bug_report.yml issue template so the version / OS / cluster details we need actually land in the report. Found a security issue? Please report it privately — see the security policy.

License

Acknowledgments

Built on the shoulders of: Wails, client-go, React, shadcn/ui, Tailwind CSS, TanStack Table / Query, xterm.js, Monaco Editor, Zustand, Vite, mise.