If you ever want to debug a kinesis stream, copy this bash one liner.

gistfile1.txt

On a mac, `brew install awscli gnu-sed` before.

streamname=staging;aws kinesis describe-stream --stream-name $streamname --output text | grep SHARDS | awk '{print $2}' | while read shard; do aws kinesis get-shard-iterator --stream-name $streamname --shard-id $shard --shard-iterator-type LATEST --output text | while read iterator; do while output=`aws kinesis get-records --shard-iterator $iterator --output text`; do iterator=`echo "$output" | head -n1`; echo "$output" | gsed 1d | grep RECORDS | while read record; do echo $record | awk '{print $2}' | base64 -D; done; done; done; done

We got a Unable to open 'd': No such file or directory error, on Mac, and it looks like the base64 command works if you just use base64 -d. Great script!