Tilt
Tilt is an open-source developer tool that automates building, deploying, and monitoring multi-service applications on Kubernetes during local development.
Definition
Tilt is an open-source developer tool that automates building, deploying, and monitoring multi-service applications on Kubernetes during local development.
Overview
Tilt targets teams working on microservice applications made up of several interdependent services running on Kubernetes. Configuration lives in a `Tiltfile`, written in a Python-like configuration language (Starlark), which declares how each service is built (often via Docker), how it should be deployed (raw YAML, Helm charts, or Kustomize), and how services relate to one another. Once running, `tilt up` opens a web-based dashboard that shows build status, live logs, and resource health for every service side by side, making it easier to reason about a multi-container system than switching between terminal windows. Tilt also supports live-update, which can sync changed files or run in-container commands without a full image rebuild, cutting iteration time for compiled languages significantly. Tilt is aimed specifically at the 'many services, one team' development scenario — where a developer needs several related microservices running simultaneously and wants fast, visible feedback while editing any of them, rather than the single-service focus of some other Kubernetes dev tools.
Key Features
- Tiltfile configuration written in a Starlark (Python-like) language
- Web dashboard showing build status, logs, and health across all services
- Live-update file syncing that avoids full image rebuilds for many changes
- Support for raw YAML, Helm charts, and Kustomize as deployment sources
- Designed for multi-service, multi-repository local development setups
- Resource dependency graph so services start in the correct order