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Show your context in the prompt

About 420 wordsAbout 1 min

2026-07-10

Once you're living in kush shells, the question you'll ask constantly is "which cluster am I in right now?" kush current answers it on demand, but it's better to just see it. kush doesn't render a prompt of its own; it sets a handful of environment variables (and pins KUBECONFIG) so whatever prompt engine you already run can show the context itself.

VariableMeaning
KUSH_ACTIVE1, set whenever you're inside a kush shell
KUSH_CONTEXTthe pinned context name
KUSH_NAMESPACEthe pinned namespace
KUSH_KUBECONFIGpath to the private temp kubeconfig

Pick the section for your setup.

starship

Nothing to do. starship's native kubernetes module reads KUBECONFIG, and kush points KUBECONFIG at the private single-context file for the life of the shell, so your existing kube prompt already reflects the pinned context and namespace.

oh-my-posh

oh-my-posh's native kubectl segment also reads KUBECONFIG directly, so context and namespace show up with no kush-specific wiring. Use it as a segment or a tooltip:

"tooltips": [
  {
    "type": "kubectl",
    "style": "powerline",
    "tips": ["kubectl", "helm", "kustomize", "k"],
    "template": " ⎈ {{ .Context }}{{ if .Namespace }}: {{ .Namespace }}{{ end }} "
  }
]

For an always-on marker that shows you're inside a kush shell before you even touch kubectl, gate a text segment on KUSH_ACTIVE:

"blocks": [
  {
    "type": "prompt",
    "alignment": "left",
    "segments": [
      {
        "type": "text",
        "style": "powerline",
        "template": "{{ if eq .Env.KUSH_ACTIVE \"1\" }}⎈ {{ end }}❯ "
      }
    ]
  }
]

There's a full oh-my-posh example in my dotfiles repo.

Plain shells (no prompt engine)

Not running a prompt engine? kush init emits an opt-in fallback that prepends a (kush:<ctx>) marker to PS1 (bash/zsh) or fish_prompt (fish), gated on KUSH_ACTIVE so it's invisible outside a kush shell:

eval "$(kush init bash)"
eval "$(kush init zsh)"
kush init fish | source

Add the line for your shell to its startup file (~/.bashrc, ~/.zshrc, or ~/.config/fish/config.fish).

kush init is not kush completion

Easy to mix up, since both are shell glue you eval:

  • kush init sets up the prompt marker above. It's only for plain shells; skip it if you run starship or oh-my-posh.
  • kush completion sets up tab-completion for context names, which every user should install. See Tab-completion.

Neither is the safety guard: the prompt tells you where you are, the guard stops you acting when you're nowhere.