Kratos is a lightweight Go framework for building cloud-native microservices.
The framework addresses the complexity of microservice development by providing small, explicit APIs across transport, middleware, registry, configuration, logging, encoding, and code generation. It uses an API-first approach centered on Protobuf definitions, automatically generating HTTP and gRPC code from schemas. This allows developers to define service contracts upfront and focus implementation on business logic rather than boilerplate networking and serialization code. The transport layer unifies HTTP and gRPC under a consistent interface, while composable middleware handles cross-cutting concerns like recovery, logging, validation, tracing, metrics, and authentication.
Kratos suits teams building microservices that need both HTTP and gRPC endpoints without framework overhead. It works well for cloud-native deployments where service discovery, configuration management, and observability are requirements. The framework's pluggable components for registry, configuration, and encoding mean you can swap implementations to match your infrastructure—whether that is Kubernetes, Consul, or other platforms. The contrib ecosystem provides optional integrations for specific registries, config stores, and observability tools, letting you adopt only what you need.
The project maintains active development with consistent contributions across core framework components and the contrib ecosystem. Pull requests receive timely review and feedback. The codebase demonstrates attention to testing and code quality standards. Documentation is actively maintained alongside feature development, with examples and guides kept current with framework changes.
