Using the console

Unshift has a small, focused UI. Every screen is driven by the REST API through a shared Pinia store, so what you see here is what the API returns.

Cluster overview (/)

The landing page shows the cluster at a glance:

• Bootstrap servers — the broker address the kernel connected with.
• Total topics and total partitions.
• Preferred leader — percentage of partitions led by their preferred broker.
• Under-replicated — partitions currently under-replicated.

Below the cards is a filterable topics table with columns for partitions, preferred-leader percentage, under-replicated count and custom-config count. Use Create topic to add a topic by name, partition count and replication factor.

Topic detail (/topics/{name})

Clicking a topic opens its detail page:

• Summary cards — partitions, preferred leader %, under-replicated, custom configs.
• A table of the topic's custom configs (name, value, whether it is read-only).
• Actions to View messages or Publish messages for that topic.

A topic sidebar lists all topics so you can jump between them.

Messages (/topics/{name}/messages)

Reads from the earliest offset across all partitions, up to limit messages (default 10, maximum 100). Each row shows the partition, offset, key and payload so you can confirm what is on the topic.

Publish (/topics/{name}/messages/publish)

The feature that sets Unshift apart from a read-only viewer:

• Key — optional; leave empty for a keyless message.
• Payload — edited in a code editor with JSON/YAML syntax modes and a Format action that pretty-prints valid JSON.
• Save — stores the current key/payload as a reusable template in the local database.
• Publish — produces the message to the topic.

Saved templates for the topic appear in a collapsible Saved messages panel, where a click loads one back into the form and the trash icon deletes it.

Errors

Failures surface inline in red. The underlying API returns Kafka failures as 502 and storage failures as 500, each with a JSON message body (see Errors).