| Bootstrap Servers | Yes | Comma-separated host:port pairs (e.g. kafka1.example.com:9092,kafka2.example.com:9092) |
| Security Protocol | Yes | PLAINTEXT, SSL, SASL_PLAINTEXT, or SASL_SSL |
| SASL Mechanism | With SASL | PLAIN, SCRAM-SHA-256, SCRAM-SHA-512, OAUTHBEARER, or GSSAPI |
| SASL Username / Password | With SASL | Credentials for the chosen SASL mechanism |
| Topic | Yes | Kafka topic to consume from |
| Consumer Group ID | No | Consumer group used to track offsets; auto-generated when omitted |
| Include Metadata | No | Include Kafka message metadata (topic, partition, offset, timestamp) in the records (default: false) |