Tilt is a development environment automation tool for multi-service Kubernetes applications. It watches your source tree, rebuilds the affected containers, updates them in a local or remote cluster, and streams logs and health into a single live dashboard so developers don’t have to stitch together docker build, kubectl apply, and kubectl logs by hand.
The build is driven by a Tiltfile, a Starlark (Python-dialect) script that declares how services are built and deployed: Docker images, Helm charts, Kustomize overlays, raw YAML, or custom build commands. Tilt’s killer feature is live_update, which syncs changed files straight into running containers and optionally runs in-container steps (like npm install or go build) instead of doing a full image rebuild and pod restart, collapsing the feedback loop to seconds. The UI shows per-resource status, readiness, logs, and errors, and supports triggers and dependencies so services that depend on a database come up in the right order.
Tilt was created by Windmill Engineering (acquired by Docker in 2023). It occupies the same niche as Skaffold and Garden, with a stronger emphasis on a rich interactive UI for developers working on large microservice stacks.