podside

A Kubernetes pod pane that lives beside Claude Code.

podside is a Claude Code mod: it draws a live pod list next to your conversation, lets you read logs and describe output with one key, and tells Claude which pod you are looking at, so you can just ask "why is this pod failing?".

It is inspired by the keyboard-first flow of k9s, but it is a separate project with no affiliation to k9s.

_{A demo cluster. Pressing <code>a</code> on the crash-looping <code>checkout-api</code> pod sent its describe output and logs to Claude, which traced the crash to a database Service with no ready endpoints and suggested read-only commands to confirm it.}

What it does

• Live pod list, grouped by namespace, refreshed every 5 seconds while the pane is open
• Health at a glance: ● running, ◐ starting, ✕ failing, ○ completed, with totals in the top bar
• Logs (following, newest at the bottom) and describe output for the selected pod
• Ask Claude: sends the pod's describe output and recent logs to Claude for a diagnosis
• Selection as context: while the pane is open, every prompt you send carries the selected pod, so "this pod" means something
• A one-line summary above the prompt (context, namespace, healthy and failing counts) once you have opened the pane
• Read-only by design: podside only runs kubectl get, logs, describe, version and config reads. It never writes to your cluster, and its context switcher passes --context instead of touching your kubeconfig.

Screenshots

| Logs of the selected pod, following | The pane with its built-in help | | --- | --- | | | |

Install

Requires Claude Code v2.1.287 or later and kubectl on your PATH.

/plugin marketplace add ohosgor/podside
/plugin install podside@podside

Or from your shell:

claude plugin marketplace add ohosgor/podside
claude plugin install podside@podside

Use

/podside              # all namespaces
/podside my-namespace # one namespace

The pane takes the keyboard when it opens. Esc hands it back to the prompt; click the pane or press ctrl+x then Tab to return.

| Key | Action | | --- | --- | | j k | Move the selection down / up (↑ ↓ and Tab work too) | | l | Logs of the selected pod | | d | Describe the selected pod | | a | Ask Claude about the selected pod | | b | Back to the list | | f | Toggle failing pods only | | n | Next namespace | | r | Refresh now | | h | Show or hide the built-in help |

The context, namespace and search fields at the top are reachable with Tab. A short guide sits at the bottom of the pane on first use; h hides it and podside remembers that.

Develop

git clone https://github.com/ohosgor/podside
claude --plugin-dir ./podside   # hot-reloads on save
claude plugin validate ./podside
claude plugin test ./podside

The hooks module is hooks/register.tsx; its tests are in register.test.tsx and run against a stubbed kubectl.

Security

A mod runs inside Claude Code with your permissions. podside's own calls are limited to the kubectl reads listed above, $.prompt.submit for "Ask Claude", and drawing its pane. You can list everything it hooks and calls without running it:

claude plugin validate .

Data and privacy

• What podside runs: only kubectl, with your own kubeconfig: config get-contexts, config current-context, config view --minify, version, get ns, get pods, logs and describe pod. It talks to your cluster through kubectl and makes no other network requests.
• What reaches Claude: while the pane is open, each prompt you send carries the selected pod's namespace, name, status, readiness, restarts, age, node and IP. When you press a, the pod's describe output and its last 120 log lines are sent as a prompt. Nothing is sent while the pane is closed or no pod is selected.
• What it stores: whether you hid the help (h), in Claude Code's local plugin store. Pod data lives only in the session's memory.
• What it never does: write to your cluster, change your kubeconfig, read environment variables or credentials, or send data anywhere else.

License

Apache-2.0