Getting started

Unshift is a browser-based console for managing and inspecting your Kafka cluster, like Kafdrop, with the added ability to publish messages directly from the UI.

The whole app ships as a single image — opeolluwa/unshift — that serves the Rust API and the built frontend together on port 8000.

Point it at an existing broker

docker run -d \
  --name unshift \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -e KAFKA_BROKER=host.docker.internal:9092 \
  opeolluwa/unshift

Then open http://localhost:8000.

On Linux, host.docker.internal may require --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway. Otherwise, use your broker's reachable address (e.g. -e KAFKA_BROKER=192.168.1.10:9092).

Compose, with a broker

The quickest way to try everything, including a throwaway broker:

services:
  unshift:
    image: opeolluwa/unshift
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    environment:
      KAFKA_BROKER: kafka:9092
    depends_on:
      - kafka

  kafka:
    image: apache/kafka:3.7.0
    environment:
      KAFKA_NODE_ID: 1
      KAFKA_PROCESS_ROLES: broker,controller
      KAFKA_LISTENERS: PLAINTEXT://:9092,CONTROLLER://:9093
      KAFKA_ADVERTISED_LISTENERS: PLAINTEXT://kafka:9092
      KAFKA_CONTROLLER_LISTENER_NAMES: CONTROLLER
      KAFKA_LISTENER_SECURITY_PROTOCOL_MAP: CONTROLLER:PLAINTEXT,PLAINTEXT:PLAINTEXT
      KAFKA_CONTROLLER_QUORUM_VOTERS: 1@kafka:9093
      KAFKA_OFFSETS_TOPIC_REPLICATION_FACTOR: 1

docker compose up -d

Add it to an existing stack

Add unshift as a service in a stack you already run:

services:
  unshift:
    image: opeolluwa/unshift
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    environment:
      KAFKA_BROKER: kafka:29092
    depends_on:
      kafka:
        condition: service_healthy
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "wget", "-qO", "/dev/null", "http://localhost:8000/api/health"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 3
    networks:
      - internal

• If your broker service isn't named kafka, point KAFKA_BROKER at the right name and port (e.g. broker:29092 for Confluent's cp-kafka internal listener).
• The snippet places unshift on an explicit internal network; the broker must be on that same network.
• No extra proxy is required — the UI and API share port 8000.

Health check

curl http://localhost:8000/api/health
# healthy

Next: Configuration for every environment variable, or the API reference to talk to the cluster from scripts.