kubectl-blame: git-like blame for kubectl

Annotate each line in the given resource's YAML with information from the managedFields to show who last modified the field.

As long as the field .metadata.manageFields of the resource is set properly, this command is able to display the manager of each field.

kubectl-blame can work in two ways:

1. Directly from the cluster — fetch and blame resources in one step:

   kubectl blame deployments my-app
   

2. From piped input — use kubectl get (or any command that outputs YAML/JSON) and pipe the result:

   kubectl get deployments -o yaml | kubectl blame
   

   This also works with Kubernetes List objects (e.g., kind: List), so you can pipe the output of kubectl get which wraps multiple resources in a List.

Installing

Distribution	Command / Link
Krew	kubectl krew install blame
Pre-built binaries for macOS, Linux	GitHub releases

Usage

# Blame pod 'foo' in default namespace
kubectl blame pods foo

# Blame deployment 'foo' and 'bar' in 'ns1' namespace
kubectl blame -n ns1 deploy foo bar

# Blame deployment 'bar' in 'ns1' namespace and hide the update time
kubectl blame -n ns1 --time none deploy bar

# Blame resources in file 'pod.yaml'(will access remote server)
kubectl blame -f pod.yaml

# Blame deployment saved in local file 'deployment.yaml'(will NOT access remote server)
kubectl blame -i deployment.yaml
# Or pipe from stdin (auto-detected)
cat deployment.yaml | kubectl blame

Flags

flag	default	description
--time	relative	Time format. One of: full, relative, none.
--color	auto	Color output. One of: auto, always, never.
--filename, -f		Filename identifying the resource to get from a server.
--input, -i	auto	Read object from the given file. When set to auto, automatically read from stdin if piped. Use - to force reading from stdin.