# deviceinsight/kafkactl

Command Line Tool for managing Apache Kafka

Repository: https://github.com/deviceinsight/kafkactl
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/kafkactl
Homepage: https://deviceinsight.github.io/kafkactl/
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: apache-kafka, avro, cli, kafka, golang, zsh, fish, kubernetes, protobuf
Last push: 2026-07-30T11:39:08+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 96/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 95, release rhythm 95, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2823, "days_push": 34, "days_rel": 34, "gap_med": 22, "n_releases_24m": 22}
- flags: no_readme
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1067, forks 109 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:27.222347+00:00)

## What it is
kafkactl is a Go-based command-line interface for managing Apache Kafka clusters, supporting operations on topics, consumer groups, ACLs, brokers, and SCRAM users. It can also run inside Kubernetes pods via an attach command and supports Avro and protobuf message encoding.

## Use cases
- manage kafka topics from the command line
- consume and produce kafka messages with avro or protobuf
- reset and manage kafka consumer group offsets
- inspect kafka brokers, acls, and scram users
- run kafka cli commands inside a kubernetes cluster
- generate shell autocompletion for zsh or fish

## When to choose
- you prefer a single binary CLI over the Kafka console scripts
- you need to manage Kafka resources across multiple contexts via config files
- you work with Kafka from Kubernetes and want to attach to a pod
- you need typed message support like Avro or Protobuf when producing/consuming

## When to avoid
- you need a graphical Kafka management UI
- you require full Kafka Connect or Streams management
- you only use Kafka through application code and never administer it

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: cli, developer-tools, message-queue, configuration-management
- domain: developer-tools
- platform: cli, windows, go
- tags: apache-kafka, avro, protobuf, kubernetes, shell-completion, consumer-groups, messaging, command-line, devops, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- deviceinsight/kafkactl (main) score 96

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:27.222347+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 2026-08-30T06:55:09.674524+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - homepage: https://deviceinsight.github.io/kafkactl/ (fetched 2026-08-29T12:56:56.117110+00:00, sha f255df3e6620)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.