Open source
Driftwatch · Kafka Observability CLI
A command-line tool for inspecting and debugging Kafka clusters in real time, built for SRE and platform workflows.
Consumer lag, rebalancing & DLQ from the terminal
The problem
When a Kafka pipeline falls behind in production, the questions are always the same: which consumer is lagging, on which partition, and why. Answering them usually means a scramble of ad-hoc scripts and half-remembered CLI incantations, exactly when you have the least patience for it. The debugging I did on production sync pipelines kept hitting the same wall at 2am, so I built the tool I wished I had.
What I built
Driftwatch is an open-source CLI, written in Go with Cobra, for real-time Kafka inspection. It turns the recurring questions into first-class commands: consumer-lag visualization across groups and partitions, partition-rebalancing analysis, dead-letter-queue inspection, and message replay with filtering. The things you reach for under pressure are one command away instead of a script you have to write while the incident is live.
The result
The 2am questions now have 2am answers. Lag, rebalancing state, and DLQ contents are visible from the terminal without bespoke tooling, which shortens the gap between “something is behind” and “here is exactly what and where.” It is open source because the problem is not specific to one team; anyone running Kafka in anger hits the same wall.