# telepresenceio/telepresence

Local development against a remote Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster

Repository: https://github.com/telepresenceio/telepresence
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/telepresence
Homepage: https://www.telepresence.io
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: kubernetes, local-development, docker, proxy, tunnel, vpn, minikube
Last push: 2026-08-25T06:20:33+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 98/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 96, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3478, "days_push": 8, "days_rel": 31, "gap_med": 10.0, "n_releases_24m": 45}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 7288, forks 579 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:58.051255+00:00)

## What it is
Telepresence is a CNCF open-source CLI tool that connects a developer's workstation to a remote Kubernetes or OpenShift cluster, creating a virtual network interface so local code can reach cluster services and DNS as if it ran inside the cluster. It can intercept, replace, wiretap, or ingest a workload's traffic, environment variables, and volumes, letting developers debug locally with their own IDE while receiving real cluster traffic.

## Use cases
- debug a kubernetes service locally without rebuilding containers
- run one microservice on my laptop connected to a remote cluster
- intercept cluster traffic to my local process for testing
- access cluster services and DNS from my workstation
- test code changes against remote dependencies without deploying
- share a dev cluster across a team with per-user traffic filtering
- develop against openshift or minikube from local machine

## When to choose
- you develop microservices on Kubernetes and the build/push/deploy loop is slow
- you want to use your local IDE, debugger, and hot reload against real cluster traffic
- you need local code to reach cluster Services, DNS, and IPs without port-forwards
- your team shares one dev cluster and needs per-developer traffic filtering

## When to avoid
- your app runs entirely locally or in Docker Compose with no Kubernetes dependency
- you cannot install cluster-side components (traffic-manager requires cluster-admin once)
- you only need simple port-forwarding without traffic interception
- you work with non-Kubernetes platforms like serverless or VM-based deployments

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: proxy, networking, developer-tools, deployment, http-server
- domain: developer-tools, cloud-computing, microservices, backend
- platform: windows, cli, go
- tags: kubernetes, local-development, traffic-intercept, remote-debugging, tunnel, cncf, openshift, minikube, devops, containers, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- telepresenceio/telepresence (main) score 98

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:58.051255+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 2026-08-29T17:38:51.846931+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/telepresenceio/telepresence (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:58.051255+00:00, sha ca07421c1cfa)
  - homepage: https://www.telepresence.io (fetched 2026-08-29T08:34:16.108985+00:00, sha 434dfc75a409)
  - site_page: https://telepresence.io/docs/quick-start (fetched 2026-08-29T08:34:16.118074+00:00, sha aabcd0ccf0fc)
  - site_page: https://telepresence.io/about (fetched 2026-08-29T08:34:16.120898+00:00, sha f80dfaba886a)
  - site_page: https://telepresence.io/docs/concepts/architecture (fetched 2026-08-29T08:34:16.123278+00:00, sha dae89e20cf7c)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.