Installation

Node.js 24 or newer (tested on 24 and 26) or Bun 1.4 or newer is required.

Alongside the CLI

Install both packages, then run the CLI’s studio command:

npm install -g @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-cli @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-studio
kafka studio

kafka studio resolves @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-studio at runtime rather than depending on it directly — the CLI stays installable on its own, and running kafka studio without the studio package installed prints an install hint instead of failing silently.

Standalone

The studio also works with no CLI at all, through its own binary:

npm install -g @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-studio
kafka-studio

Either path prints a localhost URL (with a per-session token in the hash) and opens it in a browser. Run kafka-studio --help (or kafka studio --help) for the flag list — port, host, browser, and read-only mode.

Bun

kafka-studio starts with a #!/usr/bin/env node shebang, so Bun’s tools run it on Node.js unless told otherwise. Pass --bun to bunx to run it on Bun instead:

bunx --bun @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-studio

After bun add -g @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-studio, run bunx --bun kafka-studio. Running kafka-studio directly still uses Node.js. kafka studio runs the studio in the CLI’s own process, so it uses whichever runtime the CLI was started with. See Bun for what else differs on Bun.

From this monorepo

Building from source instead of installing a release:

pnpm --filter @cookiemonsterdev/kafka-studio build
node packages/studio/dist/bin.js

Next: Running it against a broker.