Question 1

What is orbit?

Accepted Answer

orbit is a terminal UI for AWS. It gives you keyboard-driven, vim-style access to 160+ resource views across 60+ AWS services, so you can browse, inspect and manage infrastructure without leaving the shell. It is a Rust binary, not a web app.

Question 2

How is orbit different from the AWS CLI?

Accepted Answer

The AWS CLI is the right tool for scripting and one-off commands. orbit is for exploring: it renders your resources as dense, filterable tables you can drive with single keystrokes, and it remembers your profile and region context. Use the CLI to automate, orbit to see what you have.

Question 3

Is orbit safe to run in production?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Read-only is the default. orbit will not perform mutating operations unless you start it with the --write flag, so inspecting production is safe by default. You opt in to writes explicitly, per invocation.

Question 4

Does orbit work with AWS SSO and role assumption?

Accepted Answer

Yes. orbit uses the standard AWS credential chain, so SSO, assumed roles, console logins and IMDSv2 all work without extra configuration. Multiple profiles and multiple regions are supported, switchable with :profiles and :regions.

Question 5

Which platforms does orbit support?

Accepted Answer

macOS and Linux natively, with pre-built binaries available for Windows as well. You can also install from Homebrew, from crates.io with cargo, or run it in Docker.

Question 6

Is orbit related to k9s?

Accepted Answer

orbit is inspired by k9s and borrows its keyboard-first density, but the scope is different. k9s is built around Kubernetes clusters. orbit covers the breadth of AWS — compute, storage, networking, security and management — not Kubernetes alone. See the project README for a fuller comparison.

Question 7

Is orbit free and open source?

Accepted Answer

Yes, MIT licensed, with the full source on GitHub. There is no paid tier, no telemetry and no account to create.