Getting started
When something breaks in your Kubernetes cluster, kwatch tells you what broke, why, and what to do, in Slack, Discord, email and 50+ other channels.
kwatch runs inside your cluster, traces every failure back to what started it, and sends one message: what broke, why, who changed it, and what to do next.
🧭 New to Kubernetes?
Kubernetes (often called K8s) runs your applications in containers. It keeps them running, moves them between machines, and starts new ones when needed. That also means many moving parts: a container can run out of memory, a rollout can get stuck, or a service can lose its healthy backends.
If a word below is unfamiliar, the glossary explains it in one line: cluster, node, pod, namespace, CrashLoopBackOff, OOMKilled, RBAC, Helm and CRD.
✨ Why kwatch
| Benefit | What it means |
|---|---|
| Root cause first | kwatch follows a failure upstream and names the one cause. |
| Quiet by default | One message, then silence until something new is true. |
| Who changed what | See who changed what, and when. |
| The next step | Every message ends with the command to run. |
| 50+ channels | Slack, Teams, PagerDuty, email, webhooks and more. |
| Your data stays in your cluster | One pod. No kwatch cloud. |
⚙️ How it works in 30 seconds
- Install. Run one command. It asks a few questions.
- It watches. kwatch runs as one small pod in your cluster and keeps a live map of what depends on what.
- You hear. When something breaks you get one clear message: what broke, why, and what to do.
🎯 What an alert looks like
Instead of only seeing CrashLoopBackOff, you
get a message like:
🚨 OOMKilled — production / orders-api
Pod: orders-api-7ffc9d4f9-x9p4t
Node: worker-3 · severity: high
💡 Cause: the container exceeded its 512Mi memory limit.
➡️ Next step: increase limits.memory or reduce memory usage.
📄 Recent logs and Kubernetes events are included.
🔎 What does kwatch catch?
Community covers the failures that page you most. Pro, marked below, adds the rest.
| Signal | What kwatch explains | Edition |
|---|---|---|
| Pod crashes and OOM kills | Crash reason, restarts, root-cause headline and a next step | Community |
| Pending pods | Why the scheduler cannot place a pod | Community |
| Nodes | NotReady nodes | Community |
| Node pressure, draining and usage | Disk or memory pressure and draining | Pro |
| Rollouts, readiness | Stuck rollouts and unavailable replicas | Pro |
| Jobs and CronJobs, HPAs, PDBs | Failed, suspended or missed work, stuck autoscalers, blocked disruption | Pro |
| Storage | Claim, volume and attachment failures, volumes nearly full | Pro |
| Services, Ingress, network policy | Missing or unhealthy backends | Pro |
| Certificates, admission, quota | Expiring certificates, webhook failures, exhausted quota | Pro |
| Control plane | API server, etcd, DNS, scheduler and controller-manager | Pro |
Pro also adds full root-cause proof, who changed what, impact, log excerpts, routing and threads. Active probes and the heartbeat monitor are opt-in. See Community vs Pro, the configuration guide, or the complete configuration reference. Pair kwatch with Prometheus, Grafana, or Loki for long-term metrics and logs.
🚀 Install
One command, and it walks you through it.
1. Check your tools
You need Bash, kubectl, curl, and cluster install permissions. Confirm
that kubectl can reach your cluster:
kubectl cluster-info
2. Run the installer
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://kwatch.dev/kwatch.sh)"
The installer asks where alerts should go, stores credentials safely in a Secret, installs kwatch, and verifies the installation.
3. Check the result
kubectl get pods -n kwatch
You should see one kwatch pod with STATUS Running and READY 1/1. kwatch
runs as a single replica with its state on a small volume. If the pod or its
node fails, Kubernetes restarts it. Running more than one
replica for high availability is a Pro feature.
4. Optional: add Pro
Pro is free during early access. Get a key, then run the same command again and choose License / Pro, then Add or replace key. See License.
Already use Helm? See Installation.
🔒 Your data stays in your cluster
kwatch is one pod with no kwatch cloud. It sends alerts only to the channels you configure, and redacts secrets from logs and messages.
What next
- Need the full lifecycle and troubleshooting guide? Read Installation.
- Want Slack, Discord, email, or PagerDuty? Open Channels.
- Want to change thresholds or silence known noise? Read Configuration.
- Want to understand the installer? Read kwatch.sh manager.
- Want the Pro features? Read Community vs Pro and License.
- Want to contribute code? Start with Contributing.
You can run the installer again later to configure, upgrade, check, or uninstall kwatch.