⚡ LFK - Lightning Fast Kubernetes navigator

LFK is a keyboard-focused, yazi-inspired terminal user interface for navigating and managing Kubernetes clusters. It brings a three-column Miller columns layout with an owner-based resource hierarchy to your terminal.

Support

LFK is a side project I build in my free time, and the tools that go into it (IDE licenses, AI assistants) are not free. If LFK saves you time and you'd like to help cover those costs and fund continued development, consider sponsoring:

• GitHub Sponsors
• Buy Me a Coffee

Every contribution is appreciated and helps make LFK sustainable. Thank you for your support!

Screenshots

Demo

Themes

Pods

Pods fullscreen

Helm integration

ArgoCD integration

ConfigMap and Secret editors

Label and annotation editor

Can-I RBAC permissions browser

YAML preview

API Explorer

Features

Navigation and Layout

• Three-column Miller columns interface (parent / current / preview)
• Owner-based navigation: Clusters -> Resource Types -> Resources -> Owned Resources -> Containers
• Resource groups: Dashboards, Workloads, Networking, Config, Storage, ArgoCD, Helm, Access Control, Cluster, Custom Resources
• Pinned resource types: Pin individual resource types (built-in or CRD) into a "Pinned" section at the top of the list, below the dashboards. Configurable via pinned_types in config (legacy pinned_groups also supported) or interactively with p key (stored per-context or per named union set)
• CRD categories: Discovered CRDs are grouped by API group name (e.g., argoproj.io, longhorn.io, networking.istio.io)
• Hide rarely used resources: CSI internals, admission webhooks, APF, leases, runtime classes, and uncategorized core resources are hidden by default. Press H to surface them under their categories and an "Advanced" group (resets each launch)
• Expandable/collapsible resource groups with z
• Fullscreen middle column toggle with Shift+F
• Vim-style keybindings throughout (fully customizable via config)
• Mouse support: Click to navigate, scroll wheel to move, Shift+Drag for native terminal text selection

Cluster Management

• Multi-tab support: Open multiple views side by side
• Multi-cluster/multi-context support via merged kubeconfig loading
• Merged kubeconfig loading: ~/.kube/config, ~/.kube/config.d/* (recursive, symlinks followed), KUBECONFIG env var, and KUBECONFIG_DIR env var.
• Union view: Merge resources from multiple clusters into a single table with a Context column identifying the source, via --union-context (repeatable) or a named --union-set from config. See Union View.
• Cluster dashboard when entering a context (configurable)
• Monitoring dashboard with active Prometheus/Alertmanager alerts (@ key), configurable endpoints per cluster
• API Explorer for interactively browsing resource structure (I key) with recursive field browser
• Namespace selector overlay with type-to-filter
• All-namespaces mode (enabled by default)
• Local cluster management — create, list, and delete kind clusters; create, list, start, stop, and delete k3d and minikube clusters (kind has no native start/stop) from inside lfk via the Ctrl+N manager overlay.

Resource Operations

• Read-only mode: Lock a session against destructive actions (delete, edit, scale, restart, exec, port-forward, drain, etc.). Enable with --read-only, the read_only: true config field, per-context clusters.<name>.read_only, or the in-app Ctrl+R toggle (toggles the highlighted row's [RO] marker at the cluster picker; toggles the current tab inside a context). A [RO] badge in the title bar marks active sessions. See Read-Only Mode.
• Security dashboard: Aggregated findings from Trivy, Kyverno, Kubescape, Falco, Gatekeeper, plus a built-in zero-dependency heuristic Pod-spec scanner. Auto-detects installed sources, shows a per-resource SEC badge, and probes lazily on first use. Enable/disable globally or per cluster via security.enabled / clusters.<name>.security. See Security Dashboard.
• Context-aware action menus: logs, exec, attach, debug, scale, restart, delete, describe, edit, events, port-forward, vuln scan, PVC resize
• Custom user-defined actions: Define custom shell commands per resource type in config
• Multi-select with bulk actions: Select multiple resources with Space, range-select with Ctrl+Space, perform bulk delete, scale, restart, and ArgoCD bulk sync/refresh
• Resource sorting by name, age, or status, remembered per resource kind for the session
• Filter and search: Filter with f, search with / -- supports substring, regex (auto-detected), and fuzzy (~ prefix) modes
• Abbreviated search: Type pvc, hpa, deploy etc. to jump to resource types
• Command bar (:) with vertical dropdown autocomplete: resource jumps (:pod, :dep), built-in commands (:ns, :ctx, :set, :sort, :export), kubectl with :k/:kubectl prefix and flag/namespace completion, shell commands (:!). Value positions (namespace, context, resource name, option, column, format) accept fuzzy matches; command names stay on prefix.
• Watch mode: Auto-refresh resources every 2 seconds (enabled by default)
• Owner/controller navigation: Jump to the owner of any resource with o
• Events view with warnings-only filter toggle and duplicate-event grouping (z)
• Crash Investigator — per-Pod tabbed view combining restart history, pod-scoped events, previous/current container logs, and container-scoped describe — accessible from the Pod action menu (x → I). Refresh with Shift+R.
• Traffic capture — per-pod packet capture (kubectl-debug or kubeshark, auto-detected) with live decode and pcap export. Press c on a Pod or Service.

Preview and Editing

• YAML preview in the right column with syntax highlighting
• Full-screen YAML viewer with scrollable output, search, section folding (Tab/z), and in-place editing
• Resource details summary in split preview (toggle with Shift+P)
• Inline log viewer with streaming, search, line numbers, word wrap, follow mode, timestamps toggle, previous container logs, container filter, tail-first loading, line jump, structured preview pane (P: parses the selected line as JSON or logfmt, falls back to plain text), and automatic reconnect across init-container transitions (stays attached as each init container finishes and the next one starts)
• Inline describe view with scrollable output
• Secret viewing/editing with decode toggle (Ctrl+S) and dedicated editor (e)
• Embedded terminal (PTY mode) for exec and shell with tab switching — PTY keeps running in background when switching tabs

Resource Management

• Resource templates: Create resources from 25+ built-in templates (a, / to search); includes a Custom Resource template as a starting point
• Port forwarding from the action menu (with local port setting and browser open); manage active forwards via the Networking group
• Clipboard support: Copy resource name (y), open copy-as picker (Y: YAML / JSON / Table), paste/apply from clipboard (Ctrl+P), paste into search/filter boxes (Cmd+V / Ctrl+Shift+V)
• Bookmarks: Save favorite resource paths for quick navigation
• Orphan detection: Press Shift+O (or run bare :orphans) to open the cluster-wide orphan overview across 11 kinds — Pods, Secrets, ConfigMaps, Services, PVCs, HPAs, PDBs, NetworkPolicies, Roles, ClusterRoles, RoleBindings, ClusterRoleBindings. Per-list filters are still available via the filter-preset overlay (.) on each kind, or jump straight to a filtered view with :orphans <kind> (e.g., :orphans secrets). A strict / lenient toggle (s) flips between "truly unused" and "currently idle but referenced by workload templates" (e.g. CronJob between firings). Auto-excludes Helm release Secrets, ServiceAccount tokens, owner-managed resources, and kube-root-ca.crt.
• Session persistence: Remembers last context/namespace/resource across restarts

Integrations

• ArgoCD integration: Browse Applications, sync, terminate sync, refresh, view managed resources
• Argo Workflows integration: Suspend/resume, stop/terminate, resubmit Workflows; submit from WorkflowTemplates; suspend/resume CronWorkflows
• Helm integration: Browse releases, view managed resources, uninstall
• KEDA integration: Pause/unpause ScaledObjects and ScaledJobs
• External Secrets integration: Force refresh ExternalSecrets, ClusterExternalSecrets, and PushSecrets
• CRD discovery: Automatically discovers installed CRDs and groups them by API group

Customization

• 460+ built-in color schemes from ghostty themes: Tokyonight, Catppuccin, Dracula, Nord, Rose Pine, Gruvbox, and many more. Transparent background support.
• Runtime theme switching: Press T to preview and switch themes without restarting
• Auto dark/light mode: configure a dark and a light scheme; lfk switches automatically when the OS appearance changes (requires CSI 996/2031 terminal support: Ghostty, kitty, Contour, …)
• Custom color themes via config file (Tokyonight theme by default)
• Configurable keybindings for direct actions
• Configurable search abbreviations
• Configurable filter presets per resource type (extend built-in quick filters with .)
• Configurable icon modes: auto (default, detects Nerd Font-capable terminals like Ghostty/Kitty/WezTerm), unicode, nerdfont (Material Design Icons), simple (ASCII labels), emoji, or none. Override at runtime with the LFK_ICONS environment variable.
• Configurable table columns (global, per-resource-type, and per-cluster)
• Column visibility toggle overlay to show/hide and reorder columns at runtime (, key)
• Startup tips: Random tips on startup to help discover features (configurable via tips: false)
• Status-aware coloring: Running=green, Pending=yellow, Failed=red
• Resource usage metrics: CPU/MEM with color-coded bars in dashboard

Installation

# Homebrew (macOS / Linux)
brew install janosmiko/tap/lfk

# Windows: Scoop
scoop bucket add janosmiko https://github.com/janosmiko/scoop-bucket && scoop install lfk
# or: winget install janosmiko.lfk
# or: choco install lfk

# Linux: Arch / AUR
yay -S lfk-bin

# Linux: Debian / Ubuntu (Cloudsmith APT)
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/janosmiko/lfk/setup.deb.sh' | sudo -E bash && sudo apt update && sudo apt install lfk

# Linux: Fedora / RHEL (Cloudsmith DNF)
curl -1sLf 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/janosmiko/lfk/setup.rpm.sh' | sudo -E bash && sudo dnf install lfk

# Go
go install github.com/janosmiko/lfk@latest

# Nix
nix run github:janosmiko/lfk

kubectl is required and must be configured. helm and trivy are optional (Helm management, image vulnerability scanning).

See docs/installation.md for Windows, Docker, NixOS/home-manager flake input, building from source, and the full list of optional CLI dependencies.

Usage

# Use default kubeconfig (~/.kube/config + ~/.kube/config.d/*)
lfk

# Start in a specific context / namespace
lfk --context my-cluster -n kube-system

# Use a specific kubeconfig
lfk --kubeconfig /path/to/kubeconfig
KUBECONFIG=/path/to/config1:/path/to/config2 lfk

# Use a custom directory for kubeconfigs (repeat the flag for multiple)
lfk --kubeconfig-dir /path/to/configs/
lfk --kubeconfig-dir /team-a/configs --kubeconfig-dir /team-b/configs
KUBECONFIG_DIR=/path/to/configs/ lfk
KUBECONFIG_DIR=/team-a/configs:/team-b/configs lfk

See docs/usage.md for the full CLI reference and runtime tuning options: mouse capture, no-color mode, read-only mode, watch-mode interval, discovery cache (KUBECACHEDIR), and Secret lazy loading.

Navigation Hierarchy

Clusters (kubeconfig contexts)
  +-- Resource Types (grouped: Workloads, Networking, Config, Storage, ArgoCD, Helm, ...)
        +-- Resources (e.g., individual Deployments)
              +-- Owned Resources (Pods via ownerReferences, Jobs for CronJobs, etc.)
                    +-- Containers (for Pods)

Namespaces are not a navigation level. The current namespace is shown in the top-right corner and can be changed by pressing \. All-namespaces mode is enabled by default (toggle with A). Inside the namespace selector, press Space to include namespaces, Tab to exclude them (negative selection — shows all except the marked namespaces, each prefixed with !), A to reset to all-namespaces mode, or R to refresh the list from the cluster.

Owner Resolution

• Deployments show their Pods (resolved through ReplicaSets, flattened)
• StatefulSets / DaemonSets / Jobs show their Pods directly
• CronJobs show their Jobs
• Services show Pods matching the service selector
• ArgoCD Applications show managed resources (from status or label discovery)
• Helm Releases show managed resources (via app.kubernetes.io/instance label)
• Pods show their Containers
• ConfigMaps / Secrets / Ingresses / PVCs show details preview (no children)

Keybindings

For the complete keybinding reference (YAML view, log viewer, describe, diff, exec mode, and all sub-modes), see docs/keybindings.md. Press ? or F1 in-app for the built-in help screen.

Navigation

Key	Action
h / Left	Navigate to parent level
l / Right	Navigate into selected item
j / Down	Move cursor down
k / Up	Move cursor up
gg / Home	Jump to top of list
G / End	Jump to bottom of list
Ctrl+D / Ctrl+U	Half-page scroll down/up
Ctrl+F / Ctrl+B / PgDn / PgUp	Full-page scroll down/up
Enter	Open full-screen YAML view / navigate into
z	Toggle expand/collapse all resource groups / toggle event grouping (Events view)
p	Pin/unpin resource type (at resource types level)
H	Toggle rarely used resource types (CSI internals, webhooks, APF, leases, advanced core) in the sidebar
0 / 1 / 2	Jump to clusters / types / resources level
J / K	Scroll preview pane down/up
o	Jump to owner/controller of selected resource
Backspace	Jump back through teleport history (owner / port-forward / orphan / finding / mark jumps)

Views and Modes

Key	Action
?	Toggle help screen
f	Filter items in current view
/	Search and jump to match
n / N	Next / previous search match
P	Toggle between details and YAML preview
M	Toggle resource relationship map
F	Toggle fullscreen (middle column or dashboard)
.	Quick filter presets
!	Error log (V/v select, y copy, f fullscreen)
Ctrl+S	Toggle secret value visibility
Ctrl+G	Finalizer search and remove
I	API Explorer (browse resource structure interactively)
U	RBAC permissions browser (can-i)
T	Open theme selector
:	Command bar: resource jumps (:pod, :dep), built-ins (:ns, :ctx, :set, :sort, :export), kubectl (:k get pod), shell (:! cmd)
w	Toggle watch mode (auto-refresh)
,	Column visibility toggle (show/hide and reorder columns)
> / <	Sort by next / previous column
=	Toggle sort direction (ascending/descending)
-	Reset sort to default (Name ascending)
W	Save resource to file / toggle warnings-only (Events)
Ctrl+T	Cycle terminal mode (pty / exec / mux — mux skipped without tmux/zellij)
@	Monitoring overview (active Prometheus alerts)
Q	Namespace resource quota dashboard

Actions

Key	Action
x	Action menu (logs, exec, describe, edit, delete, scale, port-forward, etc.)
\ / A	Namespace selector / toggle all-namespaces
L	View logs
v	Describe resource
D / X	Delete / force delete
y / Y	Copy name / open copy-as picker (YAML / JSON / Table)
Space	Toggle multi-selection (bulk actions via x)
m<slot> / '<slot>	Set / jump to bookmark (lowercase = context-aware, uppercase = context-free)
t / ] / [	New tab / next / previous

All views (YAML, logs, describe, diff, exec) use vim-style navigation (j/k, gg/G, Ctrl+D/Ctrl+U, / search, v/V visual selection). See docs/keybindings.md for the full reference.

For the complete command bar reference (built-in commands, shell/kubectl execution, resource jumps), see docs/commands.md.

Configuration

Create ~/.config/lfk/config.yaml to customize the application. All fields are optional; only the values you specify will override the defaults.

For the complete configuration reference, see docs/config-reference.md and docs/config-example.yaml.

Quick Start

# Color scheme (press T in-app to browse 460+ themes with live preview)
# Auto dark/light mode — Ghostty-style "dark:X,light:Y" syntax switches the
# scheme when the OS appearance changes (CSI 996/2031; Ghostty, kitty >= 0.27, …)
colorscheme: "dark:catppuccin-mocha,light:catppuccin-latte"

# Use terminal's own background
transparent_background: true

# Icon mode: "auto" (default, detects Nerd Font terminals like Ghostty/Kitty/WezTerm),
# "unicode", "nerdfont" (requires Nerd Font in terminal), "simple" (ASCII labels),
# "emoji", or "none". The LFK_ICONS env var overrides this setting.
icons: auto

# Disable mouse capture (allows native terminal text selection)
mouse: false

# Custom keybinding overrides (only specify what you want to change)
keybindings:
  logs: "L"
  describe: "v"
  delete: "D"

# Search abbreviations (extend built-in abbreviations for :pod, :dep, etc.)
abbreviations:
  myapp: myapplications

Search Modes

All search and filter inputs support three modes, auto-detected from the query string:

Mode	Syntax	Example
Substring	plain text	nginx
Regex	auto-detected	err[0-9]+
Fuzzy	~ prefix	~deplymnt
Literal	\ prefix	\err.*

Clipboard paste: All search, filter, and command bar inputs accept pasted text (Cmd+V on macOS, Ctrl+Shift+V on Linux). Multiline paste shows a confirmation dialog.

Recall previous queries: While the f filter or / search input is open, press Up / Down to cycle through previous queries. / and f share one history (the matcher and matched fields are identical between them), kept separate from the : command bar. The log viewer's / search has its own history because it matches raw log lines (substring/regex over arbitrary text) rather than resource names — pooling it would surface irrelevant entries. All three persist across sessions under $XDG_STATE_HOME/lfk/ (default ~/.local/state/lfk/) — query-history for explorer / and f, log-search-history for the log viewer's /, and history for the command bar.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for prerequisites, development setup, build/test commands, project layout, and the PR submission flow.

License

Apache License 2.0 - see LICENSE for details.

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