Khelp(er)

A user-friendly CLI tool to manage Kubernetes contexts with ease.

Features

• 🔍 List all available Kubernetes contexts
• 👁️ View the current active context with details
• 🔄 Switch between contexts with interactive selection
• ✏️ Edit context configurations with your preferred editor
• 📤 Export specific contexts for sharing or backup
• 🗑️ Delete contexts with optional cleanup of orphaned resources
• ➕ Add contexts from external kubeconfig files
• 🔄 Update to the latest version using built-in self-update
• 🛠️ Shell Completions for bash, zsh, and fish

Installation

easy install script, source located at install.sh

curl https://files.stvnksslr.com/khelp/install.sh | bash

From Cargo

cargo install khelp

Usage

Overview

A tool to manage Kubernetes contexts

Usage: khelp [COMMAND]

Commands:
  list         List all available contexts
  current      Get the current context
  switch       Switch to a different context
  edit         Edit a specific context
  export       Export a specific context to stdout (can be redirected to a file)
  delete       Delete a specific context
  add          Add contexts from an external kubeconfig file
  completions  Generate or install shell completions
  update       Check for updates to khelp
  help         Print this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)

Options:
  -h, --help     Print help
  -V, --version  Print version

List

View all available Kubernetes contexts in your configuration:

khelp list

Example output:

Kubernetes available contexts:
------------------------
* minikube
  production
  staging
  development

Current

Display details about the currently active context:

khelp current

Example output:

Current context: minikube
  Cluster: minikube
  User: minikube
  Namespace: default

Switch

Switch to a different context:

khelp switch

This will display an interactive menu to select the target context. You can also specify the context directly:

khelp switch production

Edit

Open a context configuration in your default editor:

khelp edit

Or specify a context to edit:

khelp edit staging

The tool will open your default editor (defined by $EDITOR or $VISUAL environment variables) with the context configuration. Changes are automatically saved back to your Kubernetes config file.

Export

Export a specific context configuration to stdout:

khelp export dev > dev-context.yaml

apiVersion: v1
clusters:
  - cluster:
      certificate-authority-data: example
      server: https://192.168.64.2:8443
    name: dev
contexts:
  - context:
      cluster: dev
      user: dev-user
      namespace: default
    name: dev
current-context: dev
kind: Config
preferences: {}
users:
  - name: dev-user
    user:
      client-certificate-data: example
      client-key-data: example

This is useful for sharing configurations or creating backups of specific contexts.

Delete

Delete a Kubernetes context:

khelp delete

This will display an interactive menu to select the context to delete. You can also specify the context directly:

khelp delete staging

By default, you'll be prompted for confirmation. You can skip the confirmation with --force:

khelp delete staging --force

The delete command can also clean up orphaned clusters and users (resources no longer referenced by any context):

khelp delete staging --cleanup

Example output:

✓ Deleted context: staging
✓ Deleted orphaned cluster: staging-cluster
✓ Deleted orphaned user: staging-user

Note: If you delete the current context, khelp will automatically switch you to another available context.

Add

Import contexts from an external kubeconfig file:

khelp add ~/Downloads/new-cluster.yaml

By default, if a context with the same name already exists, it will be skipped:

khelp add ~/Downloads/cluster.yaml

Import Summary:
───────────────
− Skipped context(s): production
− Skipped cluster(s): production-cluster
− Skipped user(s): production-user

Tip: Use --rename to rename conflicting entries or --overwrite to overwrite them.

To rename conflicting entries automatically:

khelp add ~/Downloads/cluster.yaml --rename

Import Summary:
───────────────
✓ Added context(s): production-imported
✓ Added cluster(s): production-cluster-imported
✓ Added user(s): production-user-imported

To overwrite existing entries:

khelp add ~/Downloads/cluster.yaml --overwrite

You can also automatically switch to the newly imported context:

khelp add ~/Downloads/cluster.yaml --rename --switch

Completions

Generate shell completions for supported shells:

khelp completions [SHELL]

Where [SHELL] can be one of: bash, zsh, fish, powershell, or elvish.

Example:

# Output bash completions to stdout
khelp completions bash

# Install completions for your current shell
khelp completions --install

# Install completions for a specific shell
khelp completions bash --install

Installing completions will:

• Create the appropriate completions directory if needed
• Generate and save the completion script
• Update your shell configuration file to load the completions
• Make the script executable

After installing completions, you'll need to restart your shell or source your configuration file:

# For bash
source ~/.bashrc

# For zsh
source ~/.zshrc

# For fish
# No action needed, fish loads completions automatically

Update

Check for and apply updates to khelp:

# Check for updates (without applying)
khelp update

# Check for and apply updates
khelp update --apply

The update command connects to GitHub to check for new releases. If a newer version is available, it can automatically download and update your installation.

Environment Variables

• EDITOR or VISUAL: Specifies the editor to use when editing context configurations (defaults to vi on Unix systems and notepad on Windows)