k9s integration

t9s is a standalone binary, not a k9s fork — it doesn’t link to k9s libraries. The integration is a thin launcher: a copyable k9s plugin definition that shells out to t9s with a Kubernetes context and node as hints.

Add the plugin

Add this to k9s’s plugins.yaml to open the selected Kubernetes Node in t9s with Shift-T from k9s’s Node view:

plugins:
  t9s:
    shortCut: Shift-T
    description: Open in t9s
    scopes:
      - nodes
    command: t9s
    background: false
    args:
      - --kube-context
      - $CONTEXT
      - --node
      - $NAME

$CONTEXT and $NAME are k9s’s own plugin placeholder variables — k9s substitutes them with its active Kubernetes context and the selected Node’s name before invoking t9s.

How the Talos context is resolved

t9s resolves --kube-context to a Talos context using two rules, in order:

Explicit mapping, from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/t9s/config.yaml (falling back to ~/.config/t9s/config.yaml):
```
kubernetesAssociations:
  - kubernetesContext: prod-eu
    talosContext: prod
```
This file is optional and hand-edited — t9s never writes to it. A missing file is not an error.
Exact name match — if no explicit mapping exists, t9s checks whether any discovered Talos context name exactly matches the Kubernetes context name.

If neither resolves, t9s opens an interactive context picker instead of guessing. Once resolved, t9s opens directly on the selected node’s detail view.

Manual invocation

The same flags work without k9s:

t9s --kube-context prod-eu --node worker-3

Security

Inspect the plugin YAML before adding it — t9s documents the exact arguments it’s invoked with, and the launch path never grants k9s (or t9s) any capability beyond what your existing talosconfig and kubeconfig already provide.