Kaji

Kaji (Japanese for "helm") is a companion CLI for exploring and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters. It turns common multi-step investigations—finding related resources, tracing traffic and ownership, inspecting configuration, or checking blast radius—into focused commands backed by the Kubernetes API.

Kaji favors concise human-readable output for interactive work, offers JSON for scripts, and uses fzf when a resource or namespace is omitted. Commands it doesn't implement can be confirmed and passed through to kubectl, so it can serve as one entry point for both Kaji workflows and familiar Kubernetes commands.

Install

Kaji requires Python 3.14 or newer, plus kubectl and fzf on your PATH.

pip install kaji

Or install it from source:

git clone <repo> && cd kaji
uv sync

Quick start

# Find pods that mount a PVC
kaji infer pod from pvc/my-claim -n myns

# Browse concise resource details
kaji list pods -A

# Trace everything connected to a deployment
kaji trace deployment/web -n myns

# Explain an unhealthy pod
kaji why pod/web-abc123 -n myns

# Preview and confirm bulk deletion
kaji rm --all pvc -n myns

Omit a resource or namespace to select it interactively with fzf; Kaji prints each selection to stderr. Add -j/--json for structured output.

Table commands accept repeatable --filter COLUMN=GLOB and --exclude COLUMN=GLOB; prefix values with re: for regex. Use --columns NAME,STATUS, --sort NAME, and --reverse to shape output. list also passes -l/--label-selector and --field-selector to Kubernetes. PVC listings fetch and show kubelet usage only with --usage.

Commands and abbreviations

Any unambiguous leading prefix selects a native command. kaji --help shows the shortest current prefixes; longer prefixes and full names work too. ls is an additional alias for list.

Command	Shortest	Purpose
access	a	Summarize ServiceAccount RBAC grants
events	e	Show recent events with warnings first
find	f	Find resources by name
images	ima	Inventory workload images
impact	imp	Show a resource's dependency blast radius
infer	in	Find related resources
labels	la	Discover label keys and values
list	li, ls	List concise resource details
rm	rm	Delete every resource of a type with --all
routes	ro	Trace Ingress-to-pod traffic paths
trace	t	Map related resources as a tree
unused	u	Find resources unused by standard pod specs
why	w	Explain unhealthy resource status and events

Commands Kaji doesn't implement are shown for confirmation and then forwarded to kubectl:

kaji get pods -A
kaji -y rollout status deployment/web -n prod

See the full documentation for command syntax, output formats, and the local Kind playground.