# birdayz/kaf

Modern CLI for Apache Kafka, written in Go.

Repository: https://github.com/birdayz/kaf
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/kaf
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-05-07T22:44:13+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 73/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 81, release rhythm 48, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2913, "days_push": 118, "days_rel": 187, "gap_med": 174.0, "n_releases_24m": 3}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2438, forks 163 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:51.521581+00:00)

## What it is
Kaf is a modern command-line tool for Apache Kafka written in Go, inspired by kubectl and docker. It lets users manage clusters, topics, consumer groups, and produce/consume messages directly from the terminal.

## Use cases
- inspect kafka topics and consumer groups from the terminal
- produce and consume kafka messages from the command line
- reset consumer group offsets for a kafka topic
- pipe messages between kafka topics
- manage multiple kafka cluster configurations
- describe kafka topic partitions and replicas

## When to choose
- you want a kubectl-like CLI for day-to-day Kafka operations
- you need quick topic/group inspection and message debugging without a GUI
- you script Kafka interactions in shell pipelines

## When to avoid
- you need a graphical Kafka management UI
- you require full Kafka admin operations like cluster provisioning or ACL-heavy management
- you need a Kafka client library for embedding in an application

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: cli, message-queue, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, microservices
- platform: cli, windows, go
- tags: apache-kafka, kafka-cli, message-streaming, event-streaming, kubectl-inspired, messaging, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- birdayz/kaf (main) score 73

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:51.521581+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:30:47.104733+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/birdayz/kaf (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:51.521581+00:00, sha 2ef98a542eb3)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.