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)
• Helm release values view: user-supplied (v) or full coalesced (V) in the YAML panel
• 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
• Vertical and horizontal layout orientation (toggle with % or --layout flag)
• 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, statefulsets, and daemonsets (supports multi-select)
• Multi-select resources for bulk delete and rollout restart
• 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

Mouse (optional)

• Wheel scrolls the pane under the cursor without changing focus
• When an overlay (namespace picker, resource picker, etc.) is open, the wheel scrolls the overlay's list
• Click on a split focuses that split and moves its cursor to the clicked row
• Double-click (two clicks on the same data row within 500 ms (inclusive)) acts as Enter and drills into the resource
• Enable with mouse.enabled: true in config.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 -l horizontal                      # start in horizontal layout
aku -r certificates.cert-manager.io/v1 # qualified resource (when names collide)
aku --kubeconfig /path/to/kubeconfig   # custom kubeconfig path
aku --version                          # show version

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)
--layout	-l	Layout orientation (v/vertical, h/horizontal)
--version	-v	Show version

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)

# Mouse support (off by default — preserves terminal text selection)
mouse:
  enabled: true    # default: false

When mouse.enabled is false or unset, aku does not process mouse events and native terminal text selection works normally.

When mouse support is enabled, aku captures mouse events for click focus, wheel scrolling, and double-click drill-down. Two clicks on the same row within 500 ms (inclusive) are treated as Enter. When no overlay is open, scrolling the wheel over any pane moves that pane's cursor without changing focus. When an overlay is open, the wheel scrolls the overlay's list instead.

To copy text while mouse support is enabled, hold Option (iTerm2, macOS Terminal) or Shift (most Linux terminals) while dragging to bypass aku and use the terminal's native selection.

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
j/k or ↑/↓	Cursor up/down (list) / scroll (detail)
h/l or ←/→	Scroll left/right
Tab	Switch panel (resources ↔ details)
Shift+Tab	Next split pane
Shift+←/→/↑/↓	Directional focus (orientation-aware)
%	Toggle layout orientation
Ctrl+n	Namespace picker
:	Resource picker
?	Help overlay
y	YAML view (resets values variant to manifest for helm releases)
d	Describe view
e	Edit resource
Z	Toggle zoom
Ctrl+r	Reload all
/	Search (regex)
| / Ctrl+/	Filter (regex)

Resource List

Key	Action
gg / G	Top / bottom
Enter	Drill down / open detail
Tab	Switch to detail panel
Shift+Tab	Next 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
o + 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
Tab	Back to list
w	Toggle word wrap
x	Resolve env variables
r	Refresh
y	Return to manifest YAML (resets Values (user)/Values (all) variant on helm releases)

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, StatefulSets, DaemonSets	Rollout restart
R	Helm releases	Rollback
C	Helm releases	Set chart
v	Helm releases	View user values
V	Helm releases	View all (coalesced) values
x	Pods, Secrets, Containers, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets	Resolve/show env variables (list and detail)
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