# Mercek

> A local-first, open-source desktop IDE for Amazon ECS that uses your existing AWS credentials to manage services across multiple accounts and regions.

Mercek is a desktop application built by Utibeabasi Umanah for working with Amazon ECS. It runs entirely on your machine, uses the AWS credentials already in your `~/.aws` config, and connects directly to AWS with no backend server, no telemetry, and no account creation required. The project is open source under the MIT license and available on GitHub.

## What It Is

Mercek is a local-first desktop IDE for Amazon ECS — a native app that replaces the AWS console for everyday ECS work. It surfaces clusters, services, and tasks across every account and region in a single window, and covers the full operational loop: discovery, deployments, metrics, logs, cost sizing, topology, and a background health watcher called Sentinel. It is built with Tauri (Rust backend) and React 19 + TypeScript on the frontend.

## Architecture and Local-First Design

Mercek's architecture is explicitly designed to keep AWS credentials and data on the user's machine:

- The Rust backend (`src-tauri/`) is layered as `commands → discovery → resources → aws → domain`, with AWS SDK types confined below the `resources/` layer.
- The React frontend uses feature-sliced architecture under `features/`.
- Rust domain types are exported to TypeScript via `ts-rs` for a type-safe bridge.
- There is no hosted backend — Mercek calls AWS directly from the user's computer.
- Resolved secrets from Secrets Manager or SSM are shown as ARNs in the UI and are never written to disk.

## Core Capabilities

Mercek covers a broad set of ECS operational tasks in one window:

- **Multi-account, multi-region discovery** via `~/.aws` profiles (SSO, assume-role, MFA, static keys), with opt-in per-profile scopes.
- **Deployments and rollback** — live rollout state, circuit-breaker status, one-click rollback, and cross-environment comparison.
- **Metrics and cost sizing** — CPU/memory/ALB via Container Insights with an AWS/ECS fallback; a selectable 1h–7d window with deploys marked on charts; Fargate cost estimates and right-sizing verdicts from real peak usage.
- **Logs and ECS Exec** — CloudWatch log tailing across every task of a service, with text filter and level highlighting; interactive shell into running containers.
- **Topology map** — dependency graph from internet through load balancer to each service, with service links inferred from task-definition environment variables.
- **Sentinel** — a background watcher that flags drift, stalled deploys, flapping tasks, OOM kills, and ECR image vulnerabilities.
- **Agent panel** — connect a coding agent such as Claude Code over the Agent Client Protocol; the agent is read-only to AWS, and any proposed change opens a diff-and-confirm dialog with the equivalent AWS CLI command.

## Platform Support and Setup Path

Mercek runs on macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel) and Linux (`.deb` / `.AppImage`). A Windows build is listed on the roadmap. Installation is a direct download from the GitHub releases page — no account creation, no server setup. The app checks for new releases on launch and updates in one click. Because the macOS build is not yet notarized by Apple, first-launch requires a one-time Gatekeeper bypass; the project notes that signing and notarization is planned.

To build from source, the project requires a recent Rust toolchain, pnpm, and the Tauri prerequisites for the target OS.

## Update: v0.3.4

The latest release is **v0.3.4**, published on 2026-06-08. The repository was created on 2026-06-03 and has seen active pushes through 2026-06-08, indicating rapid early development. The roadmap lists signed/notarized macOS builds, a Windows build, scheduled tasks and load-balancer routing in the topology map, and Sentinel alerts outside the app (desktop, Slack, or PagerDuty) as upcoming work.

## Features
- Multi-account and multi-region ECS discovery via ~/.aws profiles
- Multi-cluster overview with service health dashboard
- Deployment tracking with circuit-breaker status and one-click rollback
- CPU, memory, and ALB metrics via Container Insights with AWS/ECS fallback
- Fargate cost estimation and right-sizing verdict
- CloudWatch log tailing with text filter and level highlighting
- ECS Exec interactive shell into running containers
- Automatic dependency topology map
- Sentinel background watcher for drift, stalled deploys, flapping tasks, OOM kills
- ECR vulnerability scan severity per service image
- Agent panel supporting Agent Client Protocol (e.g. Claude Code)
- Read-only by default with diff-and-confirm for all writes
- Command palette (⌘K) for keyboard-driven navigation
- Cross-environment and cross-region service comparison
- In-app auto-update
- No telemetry, no backend server, no stored credentials

## Integrations
Amazon ECS, AWS Fargate, Amazon CloudWatch, AWS Application Load Balancer, AWS Application Auto Scaling, Amazon ECR, AWS IAM / STS, AWS SSO, AWS Secrets Manager, AWS SSM Parameter Store, Claude Code (Agent Client Protocol)

## Platforms
WINDOWS, MACOS, LINUX, API, CLI

## Pricing
Open Source

## Version
v0.3.4

## Links
- Website: https://www.mercek.dev
- Documentation: https://www.mercek.dev/docs
- Repository: https://github.com/utibeabasi6/mercek
- EveryDev.ai: https://www.everydev.ai/tools/mercek