What is Octokube
Understand what Octokube is, what problem it solves, and how it fits into your team's workflow.
Octokube is a multi-tenant Kubernetes management platform built for infrastructure teams that need to give multiple engineers access to the same cluster — safely, without complexity, and without compromising security.
It runs entirely in the browser. No installation, no VPN, no kubeconfig on developer machines.
The problem it solves
Managing Kubernetes access in a team is harder than it should be.
The typical setup looks like this: one or two people hold admin credentials, everyone else either shares those credentials or goes through a slow, manual process to get their own. There is no audit trail. Access is all-or-nothing. Onboarding a new engineer means handing them keys they probably should not have.
Native Kubernetes RBAC helps, but only up to a point. It operates at the cluster level, requires redeployment to change, and cannot express rules like "this engineer can read pods in this namespace, but only during business hours." For teams that need granular, dynamic access control, it falls short.
Tools like Lens solve the visibility problem well — but they are built for individuals. Every engineer needs a local install, their own kubeconfig, and a direct connection to the apiserver. There is no shared context, no team-level access control, and no audit trail.
Octokube was built to close that gap.
How Octokube is different
| kubectl | Lens | Octokube | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browser-based | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Multi-user | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Zero-trust access | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Virtual RBAC | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| No local install | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Real-time for teams | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Audit trail | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
How it works at a high level
Octokube has three parts:
The Agent runs inside your cluster. It is the only component that ever talks to the kube-apiserver. It watches cluster resources, maintains a live state in memory, and streams updates to the Octokube backend over a single persistent connection.
The Backend receives that stream, applies your Virtual RBAC rules per user, and multiplexes the filtered data to every connected team member simultaneously.
The Web IDE is what your team sees in the browser — a full Kubernetes management interface where each engineer sees exactly the resources they have permission to access, updated in real time.
No developer ever opens a direct connection to your cluster. No credentials leave your infrastructure.
What you can do with Octokube
In the current version:
- Connect one or more Kubernetes clusters via the Agent
- Invite team members and assign access roles
- Inspect and manage standard Kubernetes resources — Pods, Deployments, Services, ConfigMaps, and more
- Define Virtual RBAC rules with namespace, resource, and time-based conditions
- Monitor cluster state in real time across your entire team
Coming in future releases: live log streaming, CRD support, exec into pods, metrics, and more.
Who it is for
Octokube is built for infrastructure and platform engineering teams that:
- Manage Kubernetes clusters shared across multiple engineers
- Need access control that goes beyond native Kubernetes RBAC
- Want full visibility into who is doing what in their clusters
- Are done with the operational overhead of distributing and rotating kubeconfig files
If you are a solo operator managing your own cluster, Octokube still works — but its biggest value shows when your team grows.
Ready to get started?
Head to the Quickstart to connect your first cluster in under 5 minutes.