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Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS
- sylens 9mo agoLooks great! If you have multiple AWS accounts in your org, you probably want to use something like aws-sso-util to populate your profiles so you can quickly swap between them
- latchkey 9mo agoI run a neocloud and our entire UX is TUI-based, somewhat like this but obviously simpler. The customer feedback has been extremely positive, and it's great to see projects like this. ssh admin.hotaisle.app
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo agoOh this looks really interesting as well. Can you tell me more about what do you mean by Neocloud and where are you exactly hosting the servers (do you colocate or do you resell dedicated servers or do you use the major cloud providers) this is my first time hearing the term neocloud, seems like its focused on AI but I am gonna be honest that is a con in my book and not a pro (I like hetzner and compute oriented compute cloud providers) Share to me more about neoclouds please and tell me more about it and if perhaps it could be expanded beyond the AI use case which is what I am seeing when I searched the term neocloud
- solumunus 9mo ago> seems like its focused on AI but I am gonna be honest that is a con in my book and not a pro A service you have no use for or interest in is “a con in your book”, what?
- latchkey 9mo agoNeocloud has come to refer to a new class of GPU-focused cloud providers. Sure, most of our customers use us for AI purposes, but it is really open to anything GPU related. We buy, deploy and manage our own hardware. On top of that, we've built our own automation for provisioning. For example, K8S assumes that an OS is installed, we're operating at a layer below that which enables to machine to boot and be configured on-demand. This also includes DCIM and networking automation. We colocate in a datacenter (Switch).
- otterley 9mo agoRackspace called; they want their business model back. :P
- kortilla 9mo agoThis is sometimes called bare metal as a service. Ironic is an open source project in this space if people are curious what this looks like.
- latchkey 9mo agoWe built our own ironic. Instead of a ton of services and configuration, we just have a single golang binary. Our source of truth is built on top of NetBox. We integrate Stripe for billing. We're adding features as customers ask for them. While it is a lot of moving parts coordination, I'm not sure I agree with the complexity... https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/_images/graphviz-21370dc232f9b68445fbbdc903742a9796cfd591.png https://docs.openstack.org/ironic/latest/_images/graphviz-21...
- kortilla 9mo agoYes, I understand you rolled your own. I was just pointing out what that general class of software was called in case others reading the thread were interested in seeing what’s involved with managing bare metal.
- dionian 9mo ago[flagged]
- tvbusy 9mo agoNice idea but I won't trust a tool that first the commit is 11 hours ago.
- jedimastert 9mo agoIt looks like the first commit was just a squash and merge, I probably would never trust a public commit history as some kind of source of truth anyways. I'm curious what your issue is?
- lafrenierejm 9mo ago> I probably would never trust a public commit history as some kind of source of truth What _would_ you trust as a source of truth for source code if not a public commit log? I agree that a squash commit’s timestamp in particular ought not be taken as authoritative for all of the changes in the commit, but commit history in general feels like the highest quality data most projects will ever have.
- thejazzman 9mo agoUntil you realize it’s trivial for an LLM to fabricate it in about a minute
- fragmede 9mo agoI really hate when cryptocurrency has valid applications but in this case, you're looking for a public adversarial append only log system which is what a blockchain is.
- bcb_1000 9mo agoThe crazier part is a reddit post on AWS was made for someone releasing a $3 a month closed source version of this, that received a lot of traction, but a bit of flack for being closed source was made 3 hours before the first commit. This guy 100% took the idea and the open source parts and recreated it to post here. Look at the readme and compare them. It is almost a 1:1 copy of the other. This dude is hella sketch. And if this is getting traction we are cooked as developers.
- bschmidt25001 9mo ago[dead]
- brendank310 9mo agoNice! A while back I had started something similar for Azure but it never really got traction (or nearly as polished as this!). It's a rough proof of concept but maybe it'll be useful to Azure users: https://github.com/brendank310/aztui https://github.com/brendank310/aztui
- NSPG911 9mo agoSeems like everyone is interested in Rust, but yours was written in Go.
- catlifeonmars 9mo agoWhy does the implementation language of a TUI matter?
- politelemon 9mo agoPlease don't use or suggest using homebrew as a Linux installation solution. It's better to simply point at the binaries directly.
- zero_shift 9mo agoWhat's wrong with Brew?
- huseyinbabal 9mo agoWhat is the error? We can continue on github, I can do my best
- frenzcan 9mo agoWhat’s the issue with homebrew?
- astrea 9mo agoIt’s specifically a Mac workaround package manager. There’s better/cleaner ways to do it on Linux.
- bbkane 9mo agoI love Debian's stability, but I rely on Homebrew (instead of apt) to get more recent releases of software. Overall it works swimmingly!
- dangus 9mo agoUnless you have immutable Linux where Homebrew is a preferred method of CLI tool installation. https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/ https://docs.bazzite.gg/Installing_and_Managing_Software/ Linux is just a kernel, not everyone agrees on what is “better” and “cleaner” to use with it!
- hollerith 9mo agoDon't let the beer emoji in the program's output fool you: unlike most Linux package managers, Homebrew has undergone a professional security audit, and is used (along with Flatpak and Ostree) by Secureblue.
- ktevfik 9mo ago[flagged]
- acedTrex 9mo ago[flagged]
- blutoot 9mo agoSo what if this was vibe-coded? How do you know this was a "slop" if you did not try it?
- acedTrex 9mo ago> How do you know this was a "slop" if you did not try it? Because I have eyes and can look at the code for 2 seconds. It's not very difficult to check for the hallmarks of careless slop code. If you can't tell in a few seconds then you can continue testing it out just like any actual project.
- minimaxir 9mo agoAnd what are those hallmarks in this case? There is no heuristic that is applicable for every programming language. Unfortunately, ratatui requires a lot of verbose code that may be indistinguishable from LLM generated code: https://ratatui.rs/examples/apps/demo/ https://ratatui.rs/examples/apps/demo/
- acedTrex 9mo agoEasiest one is ridiculous comments, always a dead ringer for an LLM. ESPECIALLY when its from a plan and comments '// STEP 2: ...' Like here in this posts repo https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/blob/2ce4e24797f7f32a52356cf61268529742c5ea5a/src/main.rs#L232 https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/blob/2ce4e24797f7f32a52... This a dead ringer for LLM slop that someone didnt even care enough to go through and clean up. Edit: Just to keep it going, you ever seen a human write dependencies like this for a small toy tui? https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/blob/2ce4e24797f7f32a52356cf61268529742c5ea5a/Cargo.toml https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/blob/2ce4e24797f7f32a52... Edit2: Sure why not, lets reimplement randomly a custom jsonpath when serde_json_path exists https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/blob/2ce4e24797f7f32a52356cf61268529742c5ea5a/src/app.rs#L253 https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/blob/2ce4e24797f7f32a52...
- Yanael 9mo ago[flagged]
- zero_shift 9mo agoInteresting, looks like k9s... but for AWS
- jedimastert 9mo agoThat was my first thought too, it looks like it was directly inspired by k9s according to the bottom of the readme.
- bschmidt25013 9mo ago[dead]
- bschmidt25013 9mo ago[dead]
- mikert89 9mo agoclaude code can do this, natively without a custom implementation
- saintfire 9mo agoJust need to pay monthly for Claude and run software that's propped up by a VC funded bubble. Due for enshittification if not shuttering. Hardly the same.
- mikert89 9mo agoonly on HN do people call what is basically AGI, a vc funded bubble
- dragonwriter 9mo agoHN is actually more likely to call it “basically AGI” than most communities. HN is very much not particularly AI-skeptical compared to other communities.
- ronbenton 9mo agoI thought the title meant the AWS UI was “terminal”, which I would be on board with
- lherron 9mo agoSomehow every 15 line shell script I write now turns into a 50kloc bun cli or tui app. Apparently there are many such cases.
- toomuchtodo 9mo agoTerminal electron.
- viraptor 9mo agoDifferent use cases. I want aws-cli for scripting, repeated cases, and embedding those executions for very specific results. I want this for exploration and ad-hoc reviews. Nobody is taking away the cli tool and you don't have to use this. There's no "turns into" here.
- lherron 9mo agoOh I think you misinterpreted my comment! I am very much a fan of this, wasn't throwing shade. I am just remarking on how my side-project scope today dwarfs my side-project scope of a year or two ago.
- viraptor 9mo agoI did :) and I from votes I'm guessing many others too. Text communication remains hard as usual, sorry about that :(
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bcb_1000 9mo agoThis guy stole this idea and basically the whole code base from another developer and ran it through an LLM to recreate it.
- bcb_1000 9mo agohttps://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/1q3ik9z/i_made_a_terminal_interface_to_help_devops_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aws/comments/1q3ik9z/i_made_a_termi...
- smcnc 9mo agoIt’s pretty clear it was your post/project you reference, but how do you know he got inspiration from you? Did OP post on your Reddit post, confirming they were even aware of it? Creating a tool via a LLM based on a similar idea isn’t quite stealing.
- huseyinbabal 9mo agoI didn’t take code or reverse-engineer anything from that Reddit project, and I wasn’t aware of it when I started. I’ve been a long-term k9s user, and the motivation was simply: “I wish I had something like k9s, but for AWS.” That’s a common and reasonable source of inspiration. A terminal UI for AWS is a broad, well-explored idea. Similar concepts don’t imply copied code. In this case, even the UIs are clearly different—the interaction model and layout are not the same. The implementation, architecture, and UX decisions are my own, and the full commit history is public for anyone who wants to review how it evolved. If there’s a specific piece of code you believe was copied, I’m happy to look at it. Otherwise, it’s worth checking what someone actually built before making accusations based on surface-level assumptions.
- songodongo 9mo agoI think you’re vastly overestimating how difficult this type of application would be to an LLM. There’s no need to steal another code base…isn’t yours closed source, anyways? You could probably get 90% of the way there with a prompt that literally just says: > Create a TUI application for exploring deployed AWS resources. Write it in Rust using the most popular TUI library.
- mrichman 9mo agoCrashes on first use. Not a good way to go viral.
- bcb_1000 9mo ago[flagged]
- mrichman 9mo agoYours doesn't work either. It's looking for a license file.
- bcb_1000 9mo agoMine is paid, not open source. You'd have to buy a license, but this has me thinking about just open sourcing it too.
- joshribakoff 9mo agoYour code can’t be both open source and closed source. In the other comment you wrote that he lifted your open source parts. Now you’re saying your code is not open source. People are allowed to copy open source code and you’re not even being consistent about whether your code is open source
- wolttam 9mo agoOP’s looks a lot more inspired by k9s than what you produced. Sorry but ideas (and now-a-days implementations) are cheap. Let the best tool win (or more practically, just use what suites you and don’t worry about it if others prefer another tool over yours. Especially don’t worry about it if someone uses an LLM to reproduce what you already did; that’s just the rising tide of LLM capabilities.)
- minimaxir 9mo agoAnd if the original app did indeed code it manually while the OP used LLMs, that gives the original a professional edge to adapt to bugs/issues and update with a better knowledge of the underlying code.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- very_clumsy 9mo ago[dead]
- nirushiv 9mo ago[flagged]
- bcb_1000 9mo ago[flagged]
- nostrebored 9mo agoIdeas are cheap. Would be unsurprised to see an open source version of this get quite good faster than your $3.33 / machine version. This is such an obviously good open source idea as well. Just add enterprise features for orgs + collaboration.
- stephc_int13 9mo agoHow much of this was made with LLM?
- otterley 9mo agoWhy does it matter?
- greekrich92 9mo agoA bug from slop could cost $10K
- otterley 9mo agoSo could a bug introduced by a human being. What's the difference?
- hxugufjfjf 9mo agoAccountability is the difference.
- h33t-l4x0r 9mo agoHow exactly do end users hold AWS devs / AWS LLMs accountable
- otterley 9mo agoAn LLM is just an agent. The principal is held accountable. There’s nothing really all that novel here from a liability perspective.
- hxugufjfjf 9mo agoThat was my point exactly. I just didn’t write it as precisely as you.
- themafia 9mo agoI wish more TUI designers would spend some time playing with Hercules and experiencing the old "mainframe" way of arranging interfaces. Those guys really knew what they were doing.
- wilkystyle 9mo agoAnything in particular you liked about them?
- actionfromafar 9mo agoThey are like web forms. Fill in everything, then hit send. Fixed positions, shortcuts, tab-indexed, the order is usually smartly layed out. Zero latency. Very possible to learn how forms are organized and enter data with muscle memory. No stealing focus when you don't expect it. Optimized for power users, which is something of a lost art nowadays. GUIs were good for discoverability for a while but increasingly I think they are neither great for power users nor for novices, just annoying and yanky.
- __MatrixMan__ 9mo agoGUIs are for distracting otherwise uninterested users into doing what you want them to do.
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoWere these 3270 or ansi terminals?
- actionfromafar 9mo ago3270
- mixmastamyk 9mo agoRight, that makes it easier to build a form-based interface. Other terminals can simulate the style, though there might be limitations I'm not familiar with.
- gogasca 9mo ago[dead]
- alberth 9mo agoEmbarrassingly dumb question: if you’re one of the few users who don’t run a dark background terminal … how well do these TUI render (in a light background)?
- deepspace 9mo agoNot a dumb question at all. I grew up using actual green screen terminals, and the advent of high-resolution colour monitors and applications with dark text on a white background felt like a blessing. I truly do not understand the regression to dark mode. It's eyestrain hell for me. Unfortunately, I was unable to test in my light-background terminal, since the application crashes on startup.
- alanbernstein 9mo agoIf I'm working in a dark room, then light mode is eye strain hell. With dark mode, the minimum brightness I can achieve is about 100x lower than with light mode.
- zozbot234 9mo agoOLED monitors will bring green screen terminals back in style quite soon (with occasional orange and red highlights for that Hollywood haxx0r UX effect)
- zaochen1224 9mo agoThe worst is when you're in dark mode and suddenly open a website or PDF that's pure white. Instant flashbang.
- hxugufjfjf 9mo agoI thank Apple every day for adding dark mode to the native PDF viewer for this exact reason.
- oneeyedpigeon 9mo agoMy personal experience is mixed. Half the time, I get something usable, the other half I get something that prints light yellow on slightly-darker yellow or highlights an item with a dark blue background and dark green text. I'm sure there's something I can tweak in my terminal app to fix this, but it's easier to just avoid those apps.
- tianqi 9mo agoI couldn't get this to run successfully. More broadly, I have concerns about introducing a middleware layer over AWS infrastructure. A misinterpreted command or bug could lead to serious consequences. The risk feels different from something like k9s, since AWS resources frequently include stateful databases, production workloads, and infrastructure that's far more difficult to restore. I appreciate the effort that went into this project and can see the appeal of a better CLI experience. But personally, I'd be hesitant to use this even for read-only operations. The direct AWS cli/console at least eliminates a potential failure point. Curious if others have thoughts on the risk/benefit tradeoff here.
- zmmmmm 9mo agoI guess it's the kind of thing where you want an almost Terraform like "plan" that it prints out before it does anything, and then a very literal execution engine that is incapable of doing anything that isn't in the plan.
- falkensmaize 9mo agoThis was my first thought too. We already have terraform for repeatable, source controlled service provisioning and we have the relatively straightforward aws cli for ad hoc management. I don’t know that I really need another layer, and it feels quite risky.
- baby 9mo agocdk bro
- SteveNuts 9mo agoI thought that was deprecated?
- sathyabhat 9mo agocdktf is, not AWS CDK. The former allows you to use Terraform without HCL, the latter is a generator for CloudFormation.
- kylehotchkiss 9mo agoShould have a Price Of Current Changes menu bar item! So you can see if your changes cost $.01 or $10,001.
- bdbz 9mo agoIf only Amazon made it so simple
- h33t-l4x0r 9mo agoThat's how they get you, lol.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- dent9 9mo agoyea let me just give access to my company AWS account credentials to this program made by some random dude on the internet
- serpix 9mo agoIf you have permanent credentials then you are already in great danger. You should be using temporary credentials with something like Granted.
- shushpanchik 9mo agoso stealing temporary credentials are fine, right?
- catlifeonmars 9mo agoYeah just delay them by ~15 minutes :)
- petterroea 9mo agowow, that looks like k9s for aws. That's awesome
- huseyinbabal 9mo agohttps://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws?tab=readme-ov-file#acknowledgments https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws?tab=readme-ov-file#ackn...
- kristiandupont 9mo agoOnly tangentially related, but: what is the appeal of TUI's? I don't really understand. The advantages of CLI's are (IMO) that they compose well and can be used in scripts. With TUI's, it seems that you just get a very low fidelity version of a browser UI?
- rgoulter 9mo agoPractically? The best keyboard-driven programs are (incidentally) TUIs. For some reason, expressive keyboard-driven interfaces aren't as popular in GUI interfaces.
- peiskos 9mo agoMy issue with TUIs is the lack of a simple interaction model. Every tool invents its own navigation style like vim bindings, custom key combos, mouse-driven flows and there’s no common fallback. In GUIs, the mouse is always there if nothing else. Even basic things like tabbed navigation can become confusing in TUIs sometimes
- rgoulter 9mo agoSure, for a lowest-common-denominator, GUIs and websites will let you use a mouse. That's great for if you want to use a tool & don't want to take time to get familiar with it. There are some things which are inherent to GUI or CLI interfaces.. but, overall, nothing ensures a TUI will be good, and nothing prevents a GUI from providing a good interface. -- The distinctions are generally going to be program specific. So e.g. using openlens (GUI) vs k9s (TUI) vs kubectl (CLI).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- victorbjorklund 9mo agoFaster and easier to use. I love for example Lazygit. It’s the fastest way to use git (other than directly as a cli of course but if you want some graphical info lazygit is great)
- shushpanchik 9mo ago> // TODO: Handle credential_source, role_arn, source_profile, sso_*, etc. So it does not support any meaningful multi-account login (SSO, org role assumption, etc), and requires AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID/AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY. That's a no-no from security POV for anything in production, so not sure what's the meaningful way to use that.
- fosron 9mo agoYeah, without SSO support this is a no-go for me too.
- huseyinbabal 9mo agoI also care security part, but this is just beginning :) New features will be added iteratively based on community requests, and it seems there are plenty of good requirements in HN thread, thanks
- zeroimpl 9mo agoYou or the developer could piggy back on “aws configure export-credentials --profile profile-name —-format process” to support any authentication that the CLI supports.
- dmacvicar 9mo agoLooks very nice! Need to test if it supports AWS_ENDPOINT_URL so it works with LocalStack.
- huseyinbabal 9mo agoWill be available soon ;) https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/issues/18 https://github.com/huseyinbabal/taws/issues/18
- bizim_oralar 9mo agolooks good. definitely will try
- utkayd 9mo agoGreat TUI app. Kudos & Ellerinize saglik
- rbanffy 9mo agoIs there a Rust port or binding for ncurses?
- alexpadula 9mo agoVery cool