Notes from the team building Radar.
Deep dives on Kubernetes visibility, multi-cluster architecture, incident patterns, and the engineering behind the product.
More from the team
Radar v1.8: Applications, Rebuilt Navigation, and Helm Upgrade Tracking
Radar v1.8 is out: an Applications view that groups workloads into the apps they form, a ground-up navigation and search rebuild, fuller Helm operations, large-cluster performance work, and Prometheus querying over MCP.
Migrating from Lens and OpenLens in 2026
A practical migration guide for Lens and OpenLens users: what changed, when to move, and how to switch to Freelens, Headlamp, k9s, or Radar.
Radar MCP vs kubectl: A Kubernetes Agent Benchmark on 52 Faults
We benchmarked Radar's Kubernetes MCP server against raw kubectl on 52 live-cluster faults. Radar improved diagnosis quality and cut tool calls by 76%.
The Best Kubernetes Dashboards in 2026 (Including Our Competitors)
Seven Kubernetes UIs ranked by use case - by a team that builds one of them. Where k9s wins, where Headlamp wins, and where we think Radar does.
SSO and RBAC Without Passing Around Kubeconfigs
A contractor needs read-only access to one staging cluster by Monday. Without SSO and scoped RBAC, that ticket bounces for a week. Here's how Radar Cloud collapses it.
Why We Priced Radar Per Cluster, Not Per Seat
Per-seat pricing punishes a visibility tool's whole point: more eyes. The five pricing models we compared, why per-cluster won, where it's a worse deal.
Why Radar Cloud Doesn't Cache Your Cluster State
Most multi-cluster dashboards copy your cluster state into a backend cache. Radar Cloud doesn't. Here's why the reverse-proxy model is the right call.
Agents, UIs, and CLIs: The False Choice in Kubernetes Operations
Kubernetes ops spans three surfaces: CLI, UI, and AI agent. kubectl is fine, but a live cluster graph deserves better than raw YAML - for humans and agents alike.
Radar's In-Cluster Architecture: Outbound-Only, Scoped, Live by Default
How Radar's in-cluster install works: outbound-only TLS, read-only RBAC by default, ~32MB RSS. The five questions every platform team asks, answered.
Radar OSS or Radar Cloud? An Honest Take on When to Use Each
The most common question in our GitHub issues: do I need Radar Cloud, or is OSS enough? Here's the honest answer, with the five questions that actually decide it.
Five Questions You Can't Answer With kubectl
kubectl hands you one object at a time, as raw YAML. Here are five questions - relationships, isolation, image contents, history, posture - where that runs out of road.
Cluster Audit: The 31 Checks That Catch What You Forgot
Most clusters fail the same checks. Radar's built-in audit runs 31 of them inline against your live state. Inspired by Polaris and the NSA / CISA hardening guide.
MCP for Kubernetes: Live Cluster Context for AI Tools
Pointing an AI at raw kubectl works, badly. Radar's built-in MCP server gives Claude, Cursor, and friends a token-optimized, RBAC-aware view of your cluster.
The Fleet Visibility Gap: Why Teams With 5+ Clusters Hit a Wall
Every tool that worked at 2 clusters breaks at 8. kubectl, Lens, k9s, Headlamp are all single-cluster-at-a-time. Here's where the wall is and what it looks like.
What We're Building in 2026: Radar OSS and Radar Cloud
Two shipping dates, one product line. Radar OSS in January, Radar Cloud in February. Here's the scope, the split, and what won't make it into v1.
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