qb

EMACS for Kubernetes.

A keyboard-driven terminal UI for managing Kubernetes clusters. Single binary, native K8s API, no kubectl dependency.

┌ prod-cluster > All Namespaces > Deployments ───────────────── ⟳ just now ┐
├───────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Overview             │ NAME             NAMESPACE    READY  UP-TO-DATE  │
│  Favorites (3)        │▶ api-gateway     production   3/3    3           │
│  Port Forwards        │  auth-service    production   2/2    2           │
│  Profiles             │  web-frontend    production   5/5    5           │
│ WORKLOADS             │  coredns         kube-system  2/2    2           │
│  Deployments (12)     │  metrics-server  monitoring   1/1    1           │
│  StatefulSets (2)     │                                                  │
│  Pods (24)            │                                                  │
│ NETWORK               │                                                  │
│  Services (8)         │                                                  │
│ CONFIG                │                                                  │
│  Secrets              │                                                  │
│ CERT-MANAGER.IO       │                                                  │
│  Certificate          │                                                  │
│  ClusterIssuer        │                                                  │
├───────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ e Edit  l Logs  D Delete  F PortFwd  * Star  / Filter  ? Help  q Quit    │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Why qb

Most Kubernetes dashboards are web apps that need a running backend, a browser, and a pile of YAML to deploy. kubectl is powerful but context-switching between commands and mentally tracking state across namespaces is slow.

qb gives you a single binary that connects directly to the K8s API server through your kubeconfig. You see everything at once -- resources, logs, port forwards, events -- and act on any of it without leaving the terminal. It discovers Custom Resources automatically, so third-party operators (cert-manager, Argo, Istio, etc.) show up in the sidebar with zero configuration.

Features

Browse

• 26 built-in resource types across Workloads, Network, Config, Storage, RBAC, and Cluster categories
• Custom Resources discovered automatically from CRDs, grouped by API group in the sidebar
• All namespaces by default with a namespace column; narrow with n
• Cluster overview on startup: node grid cards, pod health gauges, cluster stats
• Regex filter (/) against name, namespace, and all column values
• Resource count badges in the sidebar
• 2-second auto-refresh that preserves scroll position and selection

Inspect

• Smart detail views with structured, per-resource-type rendering (replicas, conditions, ports, rules, volumes, etc.)
• YAML view toggle with v
• Related events shown at the bottom of every detail view (kubectl-describe style)
• Related resources -- navigate to owner references, pods, services with r
• Labels and annotations -- l/a to select, Space to expand long values, y to copy
• Secret decoding -- Space to decode base64 values in-place

Act

Logs

• All pods, all containers aggregated by default for any workload
• Color-coded by pod -- each source pod gets a distinct prefix color
• Strictly timestamp-ordered -- lines from different pods merge correctly
• Auto-discovery of new pods -- rolling updates are captured without reopening the log view
• Follow mode (f) for live streaming
• Regex filter (/) with inline match highlighting
• Pod/container selectors (p/c) to narrow the stream
• Time range (t) -- e.g. 30m, 2h, 1d
• Line selection with j/k, multi-select with Shift+j/Shift+k, copy with Y

Port Forwarding

• Create (F) from Services, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, ReplicaSets, Pods, Jobs, CronJobs
• Survives pod restarts -- resolves the current pod per-connection via label selectors
• Persistent -- saved to your active profile and restored on next launch
• Manage -- dedicated sidebar view to pause (p), resume, cancel (d), edit local port (e)

Favorites and Profiles

• Star (*) any resource from list or detail view
• Favorites view in the sidebar -- fully functional (edit, logs, delete, etc.)
• Profiles -- named groups of favorites and port forwards; Ctrl+s to save, P to switch
• Missing indicators -- ⚠ for favorites from unreachable clusters

Command Palette

• Ctrl+p to open
• Type to fuzzy-search resources across all types in the cluster
• Prefix with > to search available commands
• Context-aware help with ? (press Tab to see all keybindings)

Exec (Experimental)

• X to exec into a pod (requires qb -e flag)
• Choose container, command, and terminal application in a dialog
• Opens a new terminal window with kubectl exec -it
• Supports Ghostty, iTerm2, Alacritty, kitty, WezTerm, Terminal.app, and others via $TERMINAL or $TERM_PROGRAM

Installation

From source

Requires Rust (edition 2021).

git clone https://github.com/cchexcode/qb.git
cd qb
cargo build --release -p qb
# Binary at target/release/qb

Usage

qb                    # default kubeconfig and context
qb -e                 # enable experimental features (exec)
qb version            # print version

At runtime, press c to switch cluster context, n to switch namespace, or O to open a different kubeconfig file.

Key Bindings

Global

Main View

Detail View

Log View

Edit Diff View

Port Forwards View

How It Works

qb uses the kube crate with rustls for direct communication with the Kubernetes API server. Authentication and cluster details come from your kubeconfig (~/.kube/config or $KUBECONFIG). There is no dependency on kubectl for any operation except exec (which spawns kubectl exec in a new terminal window).

The TUI is built on ratatui + crossterm. All API calls are deferred and executed between render frames so the UI never blocks. Log streaming and port forwarding run as background async tasks with channel-based updates polled each tick.

Custom Resource support works by discovering all CRDs at startup and using the kube dynamic API (DynamicObject + ApiResource) to list, inspect, edit, and delete CR instances without compile-time type information. CRD additionalPrinterColumns are used to render table columns.

Configuration (favorites, port forwards, profiles) is persisted to ~/.config/qb/config.yaml and auto-saved on changes.

License

MIT