infrastructure automation in pure Go
Salt's mental model.
One static binary.
Zester is a SaltStack alternative powered by NATS JetStream and nkeys. No Python runtime, no external database, no ZeroMQ — same flavor family as Salt, sharper tool.
$ zester 'web-*' state.highstateweb-01 OK 14 states applied 1.8sweb-02 OK 14 states applied 1.9sweb-03 OK 2 changed 2.1s$ zester 'G@os_family:debian' pkg.installed nginx42 peels matched · 42 returned · 0 failed
Coming from Salt? The vocabulary translates.
Everything Salt does. Less to carry.
One static binary
No Python interpreter, no pip, no virtualenvs. Ship a single Go binary to every node and install in seconds.
NATS JetStream built in
Durable events, KV storage, object storage, and horizontal scaling from a production-grade message bus — not a custom ZeroMQ protocol.
Ed25519 nkeys + TLS 1.3
A three-tier trust hierarchy with modern cryptography and least-privilege peel credentials. No RSA key exchange.
Built for 100k nodes
Commands fan out in ~250ms. Facts live in NATS KV, and superclusters with leaf nodes replace Salt syndic chains.
Jinja2-compatible templates
State files render with Gonja, including a Salt compatibility layer — grains, pillar, and salt[...] keep working.
Fleet self-update
A dedicated watchdog swaps binaries atomically, soaks on readiness, and rolls back automatically. Batched fleet rollouts included.
Ready to peel off the Python stack?
Spin up the Docker Compose playground — a master, five peels, and NATS — in one command.
Read the Quick Start