What is kiac?

kiac is a command-line tool that lets you run a Kubernetes cluster on your Apple Silicon Mac, where each node in the cluster gets its own small virtual machine rather than sharing one. Kubernetes is an orchestration system that manages containers, and a cluster is a group of machines that run those containers together. kiac stands for "Kubernetes in Apple Containers" and it is built on Apple's own container technology, which means you do not need Docker Desktop or any third-party virtualization layer installed. The practical difference from similar tools is isolation. Tools like "kind" traditionally run all cluster nodes inside a single shared Linux VM on your laptop. kiac gives each node its own VM that boots in roughly one second, so the cluster behaves more like a real multi-machine setup. A full three-node cluster is ready in about two minutes. Out of the box, kiac sets up everything a typical cluster needs: a networking layer so pods can talk to each other, a default storage class so applications that need persistent storage can claim it without extra configuration, a metrics server so you can run commands like "kubectl top nodes" to see resource usage, and a load balancer so services that need a public IP address inside your local network actually get one rather than staying in a pending state indefinitely. The command structure is intentionally close to kind, so if you have used kind before, the muscle memory carries over. You create a cluster, load images into it, check its nodes, and delete it when you are done. There is also a local web console you can open with "kiac ui" if you prefer a visual interface for managing clusters. Requirements are Apple Silicon only, macOS 26 or later for multi-node setups, and Apple's container runtime installed separately. The tool is open source under the MIT license.