# Tabernetes: Kubernetes in your browser tab
> A real Kubernetes control plane, compiled to WebAssembly: kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler and kubectl run in your browser. Join a real node with Docker and WebRTC.

Canonical URL: https://jkroepke.de/tabernetes/
Last modified: 2026-11-09


Tabernetes is a real Kubernetes v1.37 control plane. Not a simulator. kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler and kubectl are the upstream Go code, compiled to WebAssembly into one binary. The only replaced part is etcd: a small in-memory implementation of the etcd v3 API. Everything runs in your browser tab. Reload the page and the cluster is gone.

A control plane without nodes is boring. Type `join` and start the printed `docker run` command. The container runs a kubelet and containerd and connects to your browser with WebRTC. Then `kubectl get pods -A` shows flannel, kube-proxy and CoreDNS on a real node.

And yes, it runs Doom. After a join, type `doom`. [KubeDoom](https://github.com/storax/kubedoom) starts on the node, and every pod in the default namespace is a monster. Shoot one, and KubeDoom deletes the pod. The Deployment brings it back, of course.

Your browser tab is a node, too. The control plane runs in a shared worker, and every tab of this page joins the cluster as a node. Open the page in a second tab, and `kubectl get nodes` shows `tab-2`. Close the first tab, and the cluster keeps running.

Type `llm`, and a Deployment runs a language model on the GPU of your tab, with [WebLLM](https://webllm.mlc.ai) and WebGPU. The tab pulls the model like an image, and `kubectl describe pod` shows the events. Then `kubectl exec -it deploy/llm -- chat` talks to it. Close the tab, and the pod moves to another tab with WebGPU.

> **Needs WebGPU**
>
> `llm` needs a browser with WebGPU, for example a current Chrome or Edge. The first start downloads about 1 GB of model weights from Hugging Face. After that, they come from the browser cache.


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The boot takes around 15 seconds. WebAssembly in the browser is single threaded, so the whole control plane shares one CPU core. The source is in the [blog repository](https://github.com/jkroepke/blog/tree/main/tabernetes).