> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.alginte.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Introduction

> What Alginte is, how it is built, and the trust model it assumes.

Alginte is a **Kafka management and monitoring web application**. It gives operators and
developers a single UI over an Apache Kafka cluster and its surrounding services —
Schema Registry, Kafka Connect, and ksqlDB — plus a **visual builder for Kafka Streams
topologies**.

## What it manages

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Topics" icon="list">
    Partitions, offsets, configs; produce and consume records with schema-aware (JSON Schema / Avro / Protobuf) serdes.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Consumer groups" icon="users">
    Members, assignments, and per-partition lag; offset seeking.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Connect & schemas" icon="plug">
    Kafka Connect connectors and Schema Registry subjects/versions.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Streams topologies" icon="sitemap">
    Build sources, processors, and sinks visually; use SpEL for transformations.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## How it's built

Alginte ships as a **single self-contained artifact**: a Spring Boot (WebFlux, reactive)
backend that also serves a React/TypeScript single-page app. There is no separate
frontend to deploy and no external database to run — Alginte reads and writes your
Kafka cluster directly.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Backend" icon="java">
    Java 25, Spring Boot / WebFlux, Reactor Kafka. Reactive, non-blocking access to the cluster.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Frontend" icon="react">
    React 19 + TypeScript, Ant Design, React Flow for the topology canvas, Monaco for SpEL.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Trust model

<Warning>
  Alginte assumes a **trusted operator**. Anyone who can reach the UI has full control
  over every Kafka cluster it is connected to.
</Warning>

Out of the box the server **binds to `localhost`**, so a plain launch serves only the
local machine. Running it on a network is the moment you take ownership of the security
boundary: put it behind a reverse proxy (TLS, network allow-listing) and/or enable the
built-in login. See [Authentication](/operate/authentication) for the optional
username/password and OIDC login, and [Run with the JAR](/installation/jar) for the
bind-address details.

## Supported environments

* **Java 25** runtime for the standalone JAR (the Docker image bundles its own JRE).
* An **Apache Kafka** cluster reachable from wherever Alginte runs. Confluent Platform
  components (Schema Registry, Connect, ksqlDB) are supported but optional.
* Any modern browser for the UI.