mirrord is a developer tool that runs a local process inside the network, environment, and filesystem context of a live Kubernetes pod. It duplicates a pod's incoming traffic, environment variables, and file system onto the local machine, making the local process behave as if it were deployed in the cluster — without modifying code or redeploying.
The tool achieves this through a combination of eBPF-based system call interception and a lightweight sidecar agent deployed in the target pod. eBPF intercepts network, file, and process calls from the local process, routing them through the cluster pod, while the sidecar coordinates traffic mirroring and environment sharing. This approach preserves outgoing cluster connectivity and mirrors incoming cluster traffic to the local process, enabling realistic local debugging against real cluster dependencies.
mirrord supports a range of development workflows including running a local debugger on code that receives real cluster traffic, forwarding outgoing calls through the pod, and injecting the target pod's environment variables and filesystem paths. The tool's configuration is driven by the Kubernetes API, reading pod metadata and labels to set up the interception layer. Documentation and install instructions are available on the project's repository.
