How to Use Headless Mode in ksqlDB

When you configure a KsqlDB cluster, you can turn on the headless mode. This disables the rest API interface, so you won’t be able to connect by using an interactive session like ksqlDB CLI. This is especially important if you follow infrastructure-as-code best practices to avoid manual changes without previously submitting them through a CVS system like Git.

In this mode, you need to pass a text file with the SQL statements that the cluster will need to run on boot. No more changes can be done from that moment onwards.

Apart from this, some operations are not allowed such as dropping streams or tables. The official documentation has the full list of what statements are supported.