Kurtosis portal

Manage Kurtosis Portal for remote context access. Start, stop, and check status of the Portal daemon that enables communication with remote Kurtosis servers. Use when working with remote Kurtosis contexts.

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/kurtosis-tech/kurtosis

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/kurtosis-tech/kurtosis "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/skills/portal" ~/.claude/skills/kurtosis-tech-kurtosis-portal && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: skills/portal/SKILL.md

Portal

Manage the Kurtosis Portal daemon for remote context access.

What is Portal?

Kurtosis Portal is a lightweight local daemon that enables communication with Kurtosis enclaves running on a remote Kurtosis server. It's only needed when using remote contexts — not required for local Docker or direct Kubernetes access.

Start

kurtosis portal start

Check status

kurtosis portal status

Stop

kurtosis portal stop

When you need it

Portal is used with remote Kurtosis contexts. If you're using:

Local Docker: No portal needed
Direct Kubernetes: Use
```
kurtosis gateway
```
instead
Remote Kurtosis server: Use portal + remote context

Remote contexts

# List contexts
kurtosis context ls

# Add a remote context
kurtosis context add <context-name>

# Switch to remote context
kurtosis context set <context-name>

# Start portal for the remote context
kurtosis portal start

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Portal won't start	Port conflict or stale process	Run `kurtosis portal stop` then `kurtosis portal start`
Status shows not running	Portal crashed or was killed	Restart with `kurtosis portal start`
Services unreachable via portal	Portal not started for current context	Run `kurtosis portal status` to check, then `kurtosis portal start`
Connection refused errors	Wrong context or portal not needed	Verify context with `kurtosis context ls` — local Docker doesn't need portal