kop is a terminal-based (TUI) Kubernetes operations platform. Its goal is to provide an interactive experience similar to desktop cluster management tools, but fully within the terminal command line, aiming to solve the problem of conveniently operating Kubernetes clusters when no desktop environment is available.

Here's how to install kop.

You can install kop via PyPI with the following command:

pip install kop-cli

After installation, you can run:

kop --version

If the target machine cannot access PyPI, download the offline binary package from the GitHub Releases page on another machine first.

1. Open the release version you want to install.
2. Download the binary package that matches your operating system and CPU architecture.
3. Copy the package to the target machine.
4. Extract the package and run the kop binary.

On Linux or macOS, you may need to grant execute permission before running it:

chmod +x kop
./kop --version

On Windows, run kop.exe from PowerShell or Command Prompt:

.\kop.exe --version

kop

By default, it will load:

• ~/.kube/config (if it exists)
• kubeconfig files already synced under ~/.kop/

If no available cluster is found, you can import configuration from the startup page via Add or Sync.

kop --kubeconfig /path/to/kubeconfig.yaml

In this mode, the file path and kubeconfig validity are verified, and after validation it enters the resource view directly.

See demo video:

Please refer to the Documentation for more detailed usage instructions.

When using iTerm2 on macOS to SSH into a remote host and run kop, mouse clicks may not work. This happens because in Linux environments, most command-line programs rely on the $TERM variable to determine terminal capabilities (such as colors and bold text). A common value is xterm-256color. While xterm-256color is a general standard, it does not cover all extensions of modern terminals (such as advanced mouse protocols or synchronized updates). Textual is a very advanced TUI (text user interface) framework. To provide the best experience, it tries to detect which terminal is actually running. For iTerm2, it supports many non-standard advanced features. Textual has internal optimization logic: when it detects TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app, it switches to an interaction mode optimized for iTerm2. If Textual does not see TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app, it may avoid enabling some advanced interaction features, or due to configuration conflicts, it may fail to properly fall back to a generic mouse mode.

Solutions:

1. Manually run export TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app on the remote host. After restarting kop, mouse clicks should work normally.
2. Update local SSH config on macOS: ~/.ssh/config, add:

Host *
    SendEnv TERM_PROGRAM

Update remote host sshd config: /etc/ssh/sshd_config, add:

AcceptEnv TERM_PROGRAM

After restarting the sshd service, disconnect and reconnect to the remote host, then run kop again. Mouse clicking should be restored.

kop is built with Textual for terminal UI. Please refer to the Textual FAQ section about display issues in the default macOS terminal for fixes: https://textual.textualize.io/FAQ/#why-doesnt-textual-look-good-on-macos

You may use kop on Linux console (a monitor connected to a server via a VGA cable) and find kop UI rendering issues or even crashes. This is because Linux kernel built-in virtual terminals (tty1~tty6):

• ❌ Do not support True Color (24-bit)
• ❌ Do not support 256 colors
• ✅ Only support 16 colors (sometimes even only 8)
• ✅ Rendering is controlled by the kernel (not by a terminal emulator)

There is currently no good solution. If you must use kop on a physical terminal, one compromise is kmscon.

Kmscon is a simple terminal emulator based on linux kernel mode setting (KMS). It is an attempt to replace the in-kernel VT implementation with a userspace console. See https://github.com/kmscon/kmscon

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