kubernetes-sigs / kui

A hybrid command-line/UI development experience for cloud-native development

Blogs | PDF Summary | Installation | API | Custom Graphical CLIs

Kui: a Framework for Enhancing CLIs with Graphics

We love CLIs, and think they are critical for interacting in a flexible way with the cloud. We need the power to go off the rails. But ASCII is tedious.

Kui takes your normal kubectl command line requests and responds with graphics. Instead of ASCII tables, you are presented with sortable ones. Instead of copying and pasting long auto-generated resource names, in Kui you just click.

Kui is also fast. It launches in seconds, and can process kubectl commands 2-3 times faster than kubectl itself.

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Installing Kui for Kubernetes

We offer prebuilt images optimized for an enhanced Kubernetes CLI experience.

MacOS (Intel and Apple Silicon)

brew install kui
kubectl kui get pods
open /Applications/Kui.app

Windows and Linux

Download and unzip, then add the unzipped directory to your PATH. Now use kubectl kui or launch the Kui executable to use Kui's built-in REPL.

Windows Warning: Please use forward slashes for filepaths, e.g. c:/users, not c:\users.

I don't trust the prebuilts

We hear you. Choose your platform (e.g. mac:amd64), execute the following, then look in ./dist/electron.

git clone [email protected]:kubernetes-sigs/kui.git && cd kui && npm ci && \
    npm run build:electron:mac:amd64

I Want to Make a Custom Graphical CLI

Kui is a framework for adding graphics to CLIs. Kui allows for either a hosted client-server architecture, or the distribution of double-clickable applications (via Electron).

Using the Kui framework, you can design your own Kubernetes enhancements, set a custom theme or custom icon, and enhance the commands of your favorite CLI. Check out the template repo. If your enhancements would be generally valuable, please PR them back here, e.g. awesome Kubernetes enhancements can be integrated with the core Kubernetes plugin.

Code of Conduct

Participation in the Kubernetes community is governed by the Kubernetes Code of Conduct.