What is kli?

kli is a terminal-based interface for managing Kubernetes clusters, written in Go. Kubernetes is a system that runs and coordinates containerized applications across servers. kli lets you browse, inspect, and interact with everything running in a cluster without leaving the terminal window. When you open kli, you get a dashboard overview showing cluster health, node resource usage (CPU and memory gauges), pod and deployment status, and any recent warnings. From there, a sidebar on the left lists resource types -- pods, deployments, services, and others -- and you navigate between them with keyboard shortcuts. The layout is inspired by lazygit, a popular terminal Git client, and k9s, an earlier Kubernetes terminal tool. For any selected resource, you can view its current state in a table, read and edit its configuration in a text editor (changes are applied when you save), follow its logs in real time, open a shell directly inside a running container, delete it, or scale it. All of these actions happen in overlays inside the same terminal window. The sidebar menu can be customized with a YAML config file. By default it shows the most common resource types, but you can add custom resource types including third-party ones like KEDA ScaledObjects or OpenTelemetry collectors. kli supports multiple color themes and adapts to light or dark terminal backgrounds. It remembers the last cluster context and namespace you used so you start where you left off. Installation is available via a one-line shell script, the Go package manager, or by building from source. It requires Go 1.24 or newer and a reachable cluster.