JET Pilot

The open-source Kubernetes IDE that focuses on less clutter, speed and good looks.
Free · MIT licensed · macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows (x64) and Linux (x64 and ARM64) · jet-pilot.app

Introduction

JET Pilot is an open-source K8s IDE. It was created out of frustration, as all "good-looking" K8s IDEs went commercial. Power-users nowadays resort to tools like k9s, which works great, but heavily relies on keyboard input. JET Pilot combines a keyboard-first workflow with a polished, mouse-friendly desktop UI — built with Rust and Tauri, so it stays small and fast.

No account, no telemetry: JET Pilot uses your existing kubeconfig files and kubectl, and connects your cloud accounts when you want it to.

A quick tour

Features

• Clusters hub: every cluster from every kubeconfig and cloud account in one list, with live status, names, colours, folders and tags. Connect AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean, Akamai/Linode, Civo, Scaleway, Vultr and Exoscale, or paste, import or enter a cluster by hand; credentials live in your system keychain.
• Production guardrails: protected clusters ask you to type the name before destructive actions; read-only clusters can't be changed from JET Pilot.
• Multi-cluster & multi-namespace: connect to several contexts (across multiple kubeconfig files) and namespaces at once; every table aggregates them with Context and Namespace columns.
• Side panels that explain: every object opens with its state in a sentence, links to related objects, usage charts and inline editing of labels, annotations and taints.
• Usage history: CPU, memory and network charts from the cluster's Prometheus, found by itself and queried through the API server, or from metrics-server.
• GitOps: every Flux Kustomization, Flux HelmRelease and Argo CD Application in one place, problems first, with reconcile, suspend, sync and refresh.
• Helm: releases and their history straight from the cluster, chart search across your repositories and Artifact Hub, and installs and upgrades with a diff.
• Access review: "Can I…?", "Who can…?" and everything a user, group or service account may do, with the binding behind each answer.
• Operators and CRDs: printer columns for every custom resource, plus views for cert-manager, Gateway API, Karpenter, KEDA, External Secrets and Prometheus Operator.
• Built-in terminal: open a local terminal (Ctrl+</kbd>) with kubectl` preconfigured for the current context — your own kubeconfig is never modified. Shell into any container with one click, on macOS, Linux and Windows.
• Resource graph: see how Services, Deployments, ReplicaSets, Pods, ConfigMaps and Secrets relate, with live health indicators.
• Structured log viewer: follow logs across every pod of a workload, parse JSON log lines into fields and filter them with facets.
• Object management: browse, describe, create and edit any Kubernetes object in a full YAML editor (Cmd/Ctrl+S to apply).
• Command palette: Cmd/Ctrl+K to jump anywhere, switch contexts and namespaces or open a terminal — with fuzzy search.
• Port forwards that follow their pod through rollouts, custom actions from small YAML files, events, scaling, rollouts, cordon/drain and more.
• SSO-friendly: in-app sign-in for AWS IAM Identity Center, gcloud, az, kubelogin/OIDC and other exec plugins, with device codes shown in the app.
• Themes: polished dark and light themes, built-in favourites, and your own VS Code, Sublime Text or TextMate themes.

What changed in each release is in the changelog, also at jet-pilot.app/changelog.

Installation

Download the latest release for your platform from the releases page or from jet-pilot.app. JET Pilot updates itself automatically.

JET Pilot uses kubectl for some tasks, and helm to install, upgrade and roll back charts (browsing releases doesn't need it). When they aren't on your PATH, it can download them for you, verified against their official checksums (Settings › Advanced).

macOS

Install with Homebrew from the JET Pilot tap:

brew install --cask unxsist/tap/jet-pilot

The tap's cask clears macOS's quarantine flag after installing, so the app opens right away and keeps itself up to date.

[!NOTE] JET Pilot is no longer in Homebrew's main cask repository: since October 2026 Homebrew only accepts apps notarized by Apple there. If you installed it with brew install --cask jet-pilot before, switch once with brew uninstall --cask jet-pilot && brew install --cask unxsist/tap/jet-pilot (your settings are kept).

…or download the .dmg for Apple Silicon (aarch64) or Intel (x64), open it and drag JET Pilot into your Applications folder.

[!IMPORTANT] JET Pilot is not notarized by Apple. It's free and open source, and we'd rather not pay Apple's yearly developer fee. When you install the .dmg yourself, macOS will say the app "is damaged and can't be opened" or "cannot be verified". Remove the quarantine flag once after installing:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/JET Pilot.app"

That's it — automatic updates keep working afterwards. (The Homebrew tap does this for you.)

Linux

Packages are available for x64 (amd64 / x86_64) and ARM64 (aarch64):

• Debian / Ubuntu: sudo apt install ./JET.Pilot_<version>_<arch>.deb
• Fedora / RHEL / openSUSE: sudo rpm -i JET.Pilot-<version>-1.<arch>.rpm
• AppImage (any distribution): chmod +x JET.Pilot_<version>_<arch>.AppImage and run it.

Windows

Download the .exe (or .msi) installer and run it. The installer isn't code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen may warn you — click More info → Run anyway.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are very welcome! JET Pilot is built with Tauri v2 (Rust) and Vue 3.

npm ci
npm run dev             # run the app
npx vitest run          # unit tests
npm run harness         # UI in the browser with mocked cluster data (no cluster needed)

Commits follow Conventional Commits; releases are created with semantic-release.

License

MIT