Unshift

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

• Cluster overview — bootstrap servers, topic/partition counts, preferred leader and under-replicated metrics
• Browse topics — list every topic with partitions, replication health and dynamic configs
• Create topics — add a topic with a chosen partition count and replication factor
• View messages — read messages from a topic across all partitions (earliest offset)
• Publish messages — send a message with a key and payload straight from the UI
• Single image — the API and the built frontend are served together on one port, no extra proxy needed

Point the container at an existing Kafka 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).

The quickest way to try everything, including a 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 unshift as a service to 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", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:8000/api/health"]
      interval: 10s
      timeout: 5s
      retries: 3
    networks:
      - internal

Unshift depends on the following for

• Just
• NodeJs
• Rust
• Docker
• pnpm
• cmake

After cloning the repository, run just cfg, this will configure your environment Subsequently, run just dev

• 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 (define it under networks: if it isn't already).
• No extra proxy is required — the UI and API are both served on port 8000.

The UI is backed by a small REST API under /api:

Example: publish a message

curl -X POST http://localhost:8000/api/topics/orders/messages \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"key": "order-42", "payload": "{\"item\":\"espresso\",\"qty\":1}"}'

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

MIT