g9s

README

g9s

A k9s-style terminal console for Google Cloud. Switch between projects and accounts, inspect resources, and navigate related resources without changing your global gcloud configuration.

Current maturity: read-only. 43 top-level resource kinds and 21 drill-down listings. SSH to a running VM is the only interactive resource operation; mutating API actions are not implemented.

⬇️ Download

Nothing to compile and no Go toolchain on your machine. Every merge is tested, vulnerability-scanned, cross-compiled and published automatically, and these links always point at the newest release:

Your machine	Direct download
macOS — Apple Silicon (M-series)	g9s_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
macOS — Intel	g9s_darwin_amd64.tar.gz
Linux — x86-64	g9s_linux_amd64.tar.gz
Linux — arm64	g9s_linux_arm64.tar.gz

Version history and release notes → — every release keeps its binaries, so any earlier version stays downloadable.

Unpack and run:

tar -xzf g9s_darwin_arm64.tar.gz
./g9s -version

On macOS the first run of an unsigned binary is blocked ("the developer cannot be verified"). Clear the quarantine flag once:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ./g9s

Every release also carries checksums.txt and a signed SLSA build provenance attestation proving each archive was built by CI from this repository:

gh attestation verify g9s_darwin_arm64.tar.gz --repo TTMathCS/g9s

What it looks like

Every image is generated from the real UI code with invented data — see docs/README.md for how, and for the full set.

The project picker, with the live credential state of all ten configured projects — who is logged in, as which account, and for how much longer:

The per-project dashboard: every resource category, its count and status rollup, and partial-failure warnings that cannot be mistaken for a clean result:

A resource table — filtering, YAML describe, Console links, clipboard and SSH, with the tab strip showing counts per kind and the footer carrying a permission warning for an unreachable region:

Describe (d) decodes any row to YAML, with secret-bearing fields redacted before they reach the terminal:

Drill-downs open a row's children in place — a GKE cluster's node pools here — and a parent with several listings shows them as sibling tabs, like a Cloud SQL instance's databases and users:

Assisted login keeps the corporate-proxy sign-in alive: when the browser gets stuck on localhost refused to connect, pasting that tab's address back finishes the login — no waiting on a terminal that will never move:

g9s doctor checks the whole setup from the command line and says what to fix — including the proxy configuration that would break the browser login:

At a glance

Projects  →  Project dashboard  →  Resource table  →  Child drill-down
accounts      all kinds             one kind          node pools, tables,
and login     and status            or all kinds      keys, health, etc.

• Projects shows every configured project and its live credential state.
• Dashboard loads all implemented kinds and summarizes counts, states and partial failures.
• Resource table provides filtering, YAML details, Console links, copy and SSH where applicable.
• Drill-down opens a resource's children in place. For example, a GKE cluster opens its node pools and a Cloud SQL instance opens databases and users.

Complete resource map

This is the source of truth for resource coverage.

• ✅ Implemented — available now and complete for its documented scope.
• 🟡 Implemented, bounded — available now, with a configurable default row or request limit. The TUI warns when the limit is reached.
• ✅ Implemented, paged — available now, loading one bounded page at a time with an explicit continuation action.
• 🔒 Implemented, metadata only — available now, with sensitive values deliberately excluded.
• 🔜 Not implemented, next — the next planned resource work.
• ⬜ Not implemented, candidate — planned for consideration, with no delivery commitment.
• 🚫 Not planned — intentionally outside the product boundary.

Surface shows how the listing is reached: a top-level dashboard kind or a drill-down opened from a parent row.

Area	Service and resource hierarchy	Surface	Status	Coverage note
Compute and serverless	Compute Engine → VM instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One aggregated call covers every zone
	↳ Attached disks	VM drill-down	✅ Implemented	Already present on the VM response; highlights auto-delete
	Compute Engine → Persistent disks	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes unattached state and age
	Compute Engine → Disk snapshots	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Global plus regional (GCP Preview), in one project-wide listing; snapshots can outlive their source disks
	Compute Engine → Managed instance groups	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Zonal and regional groups in one aggregated listing
	↳ Managed VM instances	Group drill-down	✅ Implemented	Instance state, current action, intended template and version
	Compute Engine → Instance templates	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Global and regional templates; includes machine shape and accelerators
	Compute Engine → Capacity reservations	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes GPU-backed reservations and unused/partial utilization findings
	Cloud TPU → Queued resources and reservations	—	⬜ Candidate	Separate service and API; not part of Compute Engine reservation coverage
	Batch → Jobs	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Cloud Functions → Functions	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Both generations; aggregated across locations
	Cloud Run → Services	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Listed across configured regions
	↳ Revisions	Service drill-down	✅ Implemented	Includes traffic split from the parent service
	Cloud Run → Jobs	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes the last execution result
	↳ Executions	Job drill-down	✅ Implemented	Full execution history for the selected job
Containers	Google Kubernetes Engine → Clusters	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Aggregated across zonal and regional clusters
	↳ Node pools	Cluster drill-down	✅ Implemented	Already present on the cluster response
Storage	Cloud Storage → Buckets	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Bucket inventory; objects are fetched only when one bucket is opened
	↳ Objects and folders	Bucket drill-down	✅ Implemented, paged	500 rows per page by default; path navigation, prefix jumps and server-side glob search
	↳ Lifecycle rules	Bucket drill-down	✅ Implemented	Delete and storage-class transition rules
Data and analytics	BigQuery → Datasets	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Name, location, type and labels
	↳ Tables	Dataset drill-down	🟡 Implemented, bounded	1,000 rows per dataset by default
	BigQuery → Jobs	Top-level	🟡 Implemented, bounded	500 rows by default inside the configured time window
	BigQuery → Reservations	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Swept across the configured regions plus US and EU, where most reservations actually live. Flags baseline slots billed continuously and not lent to other reservations
	Dataproc → Clusters	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Listed per configured region; global is always included
	↳ Jobs on this cluster	Cluster drill-down	🟡 Implemented, bounded	200 rows by default
	Dataproc → Jobs	Top-level	🟡 Implemented, bounded	200 rows per configured region by default
	Dataflow → Jobs	Top-level	🟡 Implemented, bounded	500 rows by default; API aggregates locations
	Cloud Composer → Environments	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Listed per configured location
	Bigtable → Instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One global call. An instance holds no data itself; DEVELOPMENT type is flagged because it means one node, no SLA and no replication
	↳ Clusters	Instance drill-down	✅ Implemented	Nodes, zone, storage type and autoscaling — the billed capacity, which the instance row cannot show
	Spanner → Instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One global call. Capacity normalised to processing units with the node equivalent, so an instance sized in nodes and one sized in PU are comparable
	↳ Databases	Instance drill-down	✅ Implemented	Leads with drop protection, which is off by default and is the only guard against a one-command deletion
	Memorystore → Redis instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One call; the API aggregates every region. Flags basic tier (single node, no failover) and AUTH left off
	Memorystore → Memcached instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One call; the API aggregates every region. Flags nodes that are not serving while the instance itself still reports READY
	Firestore → Databases	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One global call. Delete protection and point-in-time recovery are both off by default and report nothing when off
	Datastream → Streams	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One call; the API aggregates every region. Errors outrank the state, because a stream can be RUNNING and failing every row it reads
	Data Fusion → Instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	One call; the API aggregates every region. Edition leads the row — an instance bills per hour for as long as it exists, run or not
	Artifact Registry → Repositories	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Listed per configured region. Size and cleanup policy on the row, because a registry nothing prunes grows until someone reads the bill
Databases	Cloud SQL → Instances	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes version, tier, HA and unreachable-region warnings
	↳ Databases	Instance drill-down	✅ Implemented	One of two sibling listings
	↳ Users	Instance drill-down	✅ Implemented	Includes disabled state; tab switches siblings
Messaging	Pub/Sub → Topics	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes ingestion-source state
	↳ Subscriptions on this topic	Topic drill-down	✅ Implemented	Warns when a topic has no subscriptions
	Pub/Sub → Subscriptions	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes backlog from one Monitoring query
Networking	VPC → Networks	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Subnet mode, count and routing mode
	↳ Subnets	Network drill-down	✅ Implemented	Aggregated across regions; includes secondary ranges
	VPC → Firewall rules	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Sorted by evaluation priority; disabled rules are flagged
	VPC → Routes	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Network, destination, priority and resolved next-hop type
	Cloud Router → Routers	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Region, network, ASN, peers, interfaces and NAT count
	↳ Cloud NAT gateways	Router drill-down	✅ Implemented	Inline router configuration; IP allocation, sources, ports and logging
	Cloud Load Balancing → Forwarding rules	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Covers global and regional forwarding rules
	↳ Backend health	Rule drill-down	🟡 Implemented, bounded	40 backend groups by default; bounds API requests
	Cloud DNS → Managed zones	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Global listing
	↳ Record sets	Zone drill-down	🟡 Implemented, bounded	1,000 rows per zone by default
	Cloud VPN → VPN tunnels	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Aggregated across regions with live tunnel status
	Cloud Interconnect → VLAN attachments	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Aggregated across regions
	Private Service Connect → Service attachments	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Producer side; consumer endpoints are forwarding rules
	Compute networking → Reserved static IPs	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Global and regional IPv4/IPv6 addresses, users and reservation state
Security and identity	Secret Manager → Secrets	Top-level	🔒 Metadata only	Replication, rotation and expiry; never secret values
	↳ Versions	Secret drill-down	🔒 Metadata only	Names, states and timestamps; never secret values
	IAM → Service accounts	Top-level	🟡 Implemented, bounded	Key age lookup for 200 accounts by default
	↳ Keys	Account drill-down	🔒 Metadata only	ID, origin, algorithm, age and expiry; never private key material
	↳ Direct project roles	Account drill-down	✅ Implemented	One version-3 project policy read, filtered to the account; conditions are shown and inherited folder/organization roles are explicitly outside the listing
	IAM → Project policy bindings	—	⬜ Candidate	Needs a table shaped around role/member pairs
	Cloud KMS → Keys	Top-level	🟡 Implemented, bounded	100 key rings per location by default; never key material
	Certificate Manager → Certificates	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Binary Authorization → Policies	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	VPC Service Controls → Perimeters	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Organization Policy → Effective constraints	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
Operations	Cloud Scheduler → Jobs	Top-level	✅ Implemented	Includes paused state and last-attempt result
	Cloud Monitoring → Alert policies and firing state	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Error Reporting → Error groups	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Cloud Tasks → Queues	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Cloud Build → Build history	—	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
	Cloud Logging → Log entries	—	🚫 Not planned	An unbounded query stream, not a finite resource inventory
Cost and capacity	Cloud Quotas → Usage and limits	—	⬜ Candidate	Nested quota metrics need a different presentation
	Cloud Billing → Current-month spend	—	⬜ Candidate	Requires an accessible billing export

Platform capabilities

Capability	Status	Current note
Project picker and live credential state	✅ Implemented	Checks every configured project at startup
Isolated credentials per project	✅ Implemented	Does not mutate global gcloud state
Per-project dashboard and All Resources view	✅ Implemented	Status rollups plus a merged table
Filtering, YAML detail, links, clipboard and SSH	✅ Implemented	SSH is limited to running VMs
Parent/child drill-downs with sibling tabs	✅ Implemented	21 child listings
Partial-result and row-cap warnings	✅ Implemented	A bounded or incomplete result cannot look complete
Structured completeness, not warning strings	✅ Implemented	Each gap carries a scope and a reason, so a missing permission is distinguishable from a row cap without parsing prose
Expected account versus actual ADC identity	✅ Implemented	The actual identity is displayed; a live token for a different configured account is refused
Assisted login for proxied corporate browsers	✅ Implemented	Paste the stuck localhost redirect; g9s delivers it past the proxy
Consistent HTTP/gRPC permission errors	✅ Implemented	REST 403/401 map to the same wording as gRPC; unenabled APIs stay quiet
Large OSC 52 clipboard payload handling	✅ Implemented	The escape sequence is measured against a configurable clipboard_limit; an oversized copy is refused rather than silently dropped
Panic isolation in concurrent listings	✅ Implemented	A panic in one fan-out scope becomes that scope's warning instead of killing the process and stranding the terminal
Prebuilt release pipeline	✅ Implemented	Every merge to main builds, checks and publishes a release
Confirmed VM/Dataproc state actions	🔜 Next	No mutating API action is implemented today
Terraform managed/drifted/unmanaged overlay	🔜 Next	Read state; do not replace Terraform
Cross-project inventory for one kind	⬜ Candidate	Requires context-aware identity and bounded concurrency
Horizontal dev/uat/prod comparison	⬜ Candidate	Builds on the cross-project inventory model
Cloud Asset Inventory fast path	⬜ Candidate	Optional; many organizations do not enable the API
Saved filters and bookmarks	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
CSV and JSON export	⬜ Candidate	Not implemented
g9s doctor preflight checks	✅ Implemented	Config, gcloud, proxy/loopback, credential permissions, live identity
Writing infrastructure definitions	🚫 Not planned	g9s is not a Terraform replacement
Storing passwords or minting credentials itself	🚫 Not planned	gcloud owns interactive authentication
Displaying secret values or private key material	🚫 Not planned	Metadata only

See PERMISSIONS.md for the API to enable and the IAM permissions to grant per resource kind, ROADMAP.md for design rationale and request costs, and ADVICE.md for the cross-project architecture review.

Requirements and installation

The prebuilt binary from the ⬇️ Download table at the top is the intended install — nothing compiles, tests or fetches modules on your machine. You also need the gcloud CLI, which g9s shells out to for login and SSH (372.0.0+ for the --no-browser flow), and read access to the projects you configure — see PERMISSIONS.md for the API to enable and the IAM permissions each resource kind needs:

brew install --cask gcloud-cli   # macOS with Homebrew; or use Google's installer

Building from source is the alternative when you would rather compile than download, and needs Go 1.25+:

git clone https://github.com/TTMathCS/g9s.git
cd g9s
go build -o g9s ./cmd/g9s

or go install github.com/TTMathCS/g9s/cmd/g9s@latest (binaries land in ~/go/bin). On a restricted network, point GOPROXY at your internal module registry (for example an Artifactory Go repository); cloning the source does not remove the need to fetch the modules in go.mod.

Quick start

g9s -init
$EDITOR ~/.config/g9s/config.yaml
g9s

Start with one project. Select it and press l; g9s starts gcloud auth application-default login and opens the sign-in link, staying interactive so a login that gets stuck can be rescued — see Login on a corporate laptop. Press L, or set defaults.login_no_browser: true, when this machine has no browser at all. g9s doctor checks the whole setup from the command line.

Configuration

The default file is ~/.config/g9s/config.yaml. Override it with $G9S_CONFIG or g9s -config <path>.

defaults:
  # Regional services only scan locations listed here.
  regions:
    - northamerica-northeast1
    - us-central1

  credential_dir: ~/.local/share/g9s/credentials
  gcloud_path: gcloud
  login_no_browser: false
  list_timeout: 90s
  bigquery_job_window: 24h
  storage_objects_page_size: 500
  clipboard_limit: 8192

projects:
  - name: sandbox
    project_id: my-sandbox-project
    description: personal access, read-only

  - name: prod-data
    project_id: my-prod-data-project
    account: svc-prod-support@example.com
    regions:
      - northamerica-northeast1
    composer_locations:
      - us-central1

Project settings override defaults. Dataproc and KMS always include global. Unknown YAML keys are errors. An existing ADC file can be selected with credentials_file when no interactive browser flow works. See config.example.yaml for the annotated configuration.

Storage object browsing

Open a bucket and select its Objects drill-down. The initial page lists only the current path's immediate objects and folders; it never recursively downloads an entire bucket.

Key or command	Action
enter on a folder	Open that prefix
q / esc	Clear a search, move to the parent path, then return to buckets
space	Load the next page when the count has a + suffix
:cd logs/2026/	Jump to a prefix relative to the current path
:cd /logs/ or :cd gs://bucket/logs/	Jump from the bucket root
:find **/*.json	Server-side glob search below the current path
/	Filter only the rows already loaded in the TUI

storage_objects_page_size defaults to 500 and accepts 1–1,000. It controls one TUI page, not the total number of rows available: continuation tokens remain available until the API reports the last page. The client may make another service request to fill one page when Cloud Storage returns a shorter response. Current object generations are shown by default; older versions and soft-deleted objects are not mixed into the ordinary browser.

Clipboard size

y copies over the OSC 52 terminal escape, which needs no clipboard binary and works over SSH — but the clipboard travels as a single escape sequence, and a terminal that finds it too long discards the whole thing without reporting anything. clipboard_limit (default 8,192 bytes, the point where a stock xterm stops) is measured against the encoded sequence, which base64 makes about a third larger than the text. An oversized copy is refused with a message naming both sizes rather than reported as a copy that did not happen. Raise it once you know what your terminal accepts; -1 removes the check. In tmux, OSC 52 is swallowed entirely unless set-clipboard on is set.

Row and request limits

Omitted or 0 uses the default. A positive number sets a custom cap; -1 removes it. The footer warns whenever a listing reaches its cap.

Key	Default	Bounds
bigquery_jobs	500	Rows inside bigquery_job_window
dataflow_jobs	500	Rows
dataproc_jobs_per_region	200	Rows per region
cluster_jobs	200	Rows per cluster
bigquery_tables	1,000	Rows per dataset
dns_record_sets	1,000	Rows per zone
backend_groups	40	Requests: one health call per group
service_account_key_lookups	200	Requests: one key-list call per account
kms_key_rings	100	Requests per location

defaults:
  limits:
    bigquery_jobs: 5000
    dns_record_sets: -1
    backend_groups: 10

Keys

Key	Action
↑/k, ↓/j, g/G	Move; jump to top or bottom
enter	Open a dashboard kind or the selected row's drill-down; otherwise describe
d	Always describe the selected resource as YAML
Displayed hotkey	Open that resource kind directly
0 / a	Open All Resources
tab / shift+tab, ] / [	Cycle kinds or sibling drill-downs
:	Command mode; for example :vm, :all, or :cd / :find in Storage Objects
/	Filter rows; esc clears
space	Load the next Storage Objects page when available
r	Refresh the current kind, all dashboard kinds, or selected credential
o	Open Airflow for Composer; Cloud Console otherwise
y	Copy the resource name; from detail view, copy YAML (see clipboard_limit)
s	SSH to a selected running VM
l / L	Login: assisted browser flow / no-browser flow for machines without one
q / esc	Back one level
p	Return to projects
?	Help
ctrl+c / :q	Quit

Authentication and safety

g9s never receives a password. Login is always gcloud's own auth application-default login flow: the browser or identity provider handles password and MFA, and gcloud writes the credential.

Each project uses its own CLOUDSDK_CONFIG directory, so switching projects does not change ~/.config/gcloud. Credential expiry is checked with a live token exchange. Resource discovery uses typed Google clients; gcloud is used only for login and SSH.

Login on a corporate laptop

The standard gcloud browser login has a step that corporate proxies break: after you sign in, the browser fetches http://localhost:<port>/ to hand the authorization code back to gcloud. A browser that sends localhost through the proxy never delivers it — the sign-in succeeds and gcloud waits forever.

g9s runs the browser login in assisted mode to survive exactly this. Press l; g9s starts gcloud, opens the sign-in link, and stays interactive:

1. If your browser can reach its own localhost, the login completes by itself — nothing to do.
2. If the browser instead lands on an error like "localhost refused to connect", the login is still alive. Copy the entire address from that stuck tab's address bar (it looks like http://localhost:8085/?state=…&code=…) and paste it into g9s. g9s hands it to gcloud on your machine directly, bypassing the proxy, and the login completes. The code in that address is single-use and useless outside the running login.

If the flow cannot run at all (no browser on this machine), press L for gcloud's --no-browser flow: gcloud prints a command — not a link — to run on a machine that has a browser and gcloud 372.0.0+, and that command's output is pasted back. Opening the URL inside it in a browser produces Error 400: missing required parameter: redirect_uri; the command is the thing to copy.

If neither interactive flow can complete, run gcloud auth application-default login wherever it does work and point the project at the file it writes with credentials_file: in the config.

g9s doctor

g9s doctor (or g9s -doctor) checks the whole setup outside the TUI and prints one line per finding, with a remedy for anything broken: the config file, the gcloud binary and version, whether a proxy would break the browser login, per-project credential directory permissions, and — unless -offline is set — a live token exchange for every project, verifying each credential belongs to the account the config expects. It exits non-zero on failures, so it also works as a scripted onboarding check:

g9s doctor            # everything, including live credential checks
g9s doctor -offline   # config, gcloud and proxy checks only; nothing leaves the machine

All GCP API calls are currently read-only. API-supplied control characters are removed before rendering, and sensitive fields returned inside otherwise ordinary resources are redacted before YAML reaches the terminal or clipboard. See SECURITY.md for the full threat model.

Partial, bounded and paged results

When one region fails, g9s keeps successful rows and reports the failed scope:

⚠ 2 warnings: europe-west1: permission denied; us-east4: permission denied

When a configurable cap is reached, it is reported the same way:

⚠ 1 warning: only the 500 most recent jobs are shown

Storage Objects is paged rather than capped. A count such as 500+ means a continuation token is available; press space to append the next page. It is not shown as a warning because no scope failed and the next page remains directly reachable.

Keep configured region lists accurate. A regional resource in a location that was never requested cannot be discovered.

Development

Top-level kinds implement gcp.Lister and register in Listers(). Resources belonging to one parent row implement gcp.ChildLister and register in Children(). The UI discovers both registries automatically.

gofmt -w .
go vet ./...
go test -race ./...
go build ./...

License

MIT