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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.
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The read-only hesitation seems overcautious. If you’re genuinely using it read-only, what’s the failure mode? The tool crashes or returns bad data - same risks as the AWS CLI or console.
The “middleware layer” concern doesn’t hold up. This is just a better interface for exploring AWS resources, same as k9s is for Kubernetes. If you trust k9s (which clearly works, given how widely it’s used), the same logic applies here.
If you’re enforcing infrastructure changes through IaC, having a visual way to explore your AWS resources makes sense. The AWS console is clunky for this.
All the use cases that popped into my head when I saw this were around how nice it would be to be able to quickly see what was really happening without trying to flop between logs and the AWS console. That's really how I use k9s and wouldn't be able to stand k8s without it. I almost never make any changes from inside k9s. But yeah... I could see using this with a role that only has Read permissions on everything.
The AWS APIs are quite stable and usually do exactly one thing. It’s hard to really see much risk. The worst case seems to be that the API returns a new enum value and the code misinterprets it rather than showing an error message.
I 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.
With properly scoped roles I would not be concerned
This 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.