Frequently Asked Questions

Mercek is a desktop IDE for managing AWS ECS clusters and tasks. It gives you the operational visibility and control of the AWS console, but with a workflow designed for developers who spend most of their time in the terminal. Think Lens for Kubernetes, but built specifically for ECS.

No. Mercek is built for developers who want clarity, not complexity. If you've deployed anything to ECS even once, you can use Mercek immediately. We abstract away the noise and surface what actually matters: your clusters, services, tasks, and logs.

Mercek is available for macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon) and Linux. Windows support is in beta. Download from the Mercek website or install via Homebrew.

Yes. Mercek respects your AWS credential profiles (as configured in ~/.aws/credentials). Switch between accounts or regions with a single click. Multi-account operations are first-class.

Absolutely. Mercek works with EC2-backed clusters, Fargate-only clusters, and mixed deployments. We detect your launch type automatically and show you exactly what you need.

Yes. Real-time log streaming from running tasks is built in. Tail logs, filter by pattern, copy to clipboard, and export to file. No context-switching to CloudWatch.

Yes. Register new task definitions, view and compare revisions, and manage container images all from Mercek. JSON editing is simplified, not replaced.

Yes, via ECS Exec. If your tasks support it (IAM permissions and ECS Exec role), Mercek will let you shell into running containers. One-click access, no copy-pasting command ARNs.

Mercek is a runtime management tool, not an IaC editor. However, you can safely use Mercek alongside Terraform. It operates on existing infrastructure and won't interfere with your Terraform state. Perfect for debugging and operations after deployment.

Mercek can update task definitions and force new deployments on services. This is useful for quick hotfixes and rollbacks during incidents. For CI/CD pipelines, your existing tools remain the source of truth.

Not yet. Our roadmap includes webhook integrations and alerting connectors. For now, use Mercek for ad-hoc monitoring and debugging, and keep CloudWatch or third-party tools for production alerting.

Mercek is a graphical tool, but we expose a CLI for scripting. Common operations (restart service, update task definition, view logs) can be called from shell scripts or CI/CD pipelines.

Yes. Mercek Community is free for individual developers and small teams. Unlimited clusters, services, and tasks. Premium features (team collaboration, advanced auditing) require a paid subscription.

Mercek Professional is $9 per month per user. For teams, we offer bulk discounts and dedicated support. Enterprise customers can contact sales for custom pricing and SLAs.

Yes. Create a free Mercek account and you get 14 days of full Professional access. No credit card required. If you stick with it, we'll email a 30 percent discount code.

Yes. Each user in your organization can manage their own credentials, and you can set up role assumption across member accounts. Billing happens per seat on your subscription.

Mercek never stores or transmits your AWS credentials. It reads from your local AWS credential chain. All API calls to AWS happen directly from your machine, never through Mercek servers.

The Mercek CLI is open source. The desktop IDE is proprietary but fully auditable. We provide source code review for Enterprise customers. Data never leaves your machine.

The IDE runs entirely offline once installed. License validation happens once per week (can be cached for two weeks in offline mode). Perfect for air-gapped environments.

Please email security@mercek.dev with details. We take security seriously and will triage within 24 hours. Responsible disclosure is appreciated.

Check three things: (1) Your AWS credentials are valid and have the required permissions, (2) Your region is correct in Mercek settings, (3) Your cluster exists in that region. Run a describe command to verify. If still stuck, contact support with your region and cluster name.

The most common cause is CloudWatch Logs permissions. Your IAM role needs the right permissions on the log group. Check your task definition's log router configuration and ensure the IAM role has the right policy attached.

Quit Mercek completely. Delete the config file. Restart Mercek. It will reinitialize with defaults and ask for your AWS region.

Open an issue on GitHub or email hello@mercek.dev with steps to reproduce. Include Mercek version and your OS version. Screenshots help.