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whiskd

Lightweight process wrapper with a TUI status bar for agents and humans.

Jeecabs/whiskdcommunitylistedunreviewed
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Set up

Skills are installed by placing their folder where your agent loads skills.

Download ZIP from GitHub Open the repository

The download comes from github.com/Jeecabs/whiskd itself, not from our server, so what you get is exactly what its author published.

Install instructions come from the README

Skills do not use an MCP config. Follow the steps in the README below.

README

synced Oct 26, 2026

whiskd

CI Release License: MIT

A tiny process wrapper for agents and humans. Start long-running commands in the background, read their logs, attach a live view, and stop them cleanly. It's a single binary with no daemon and no config. macOS and Linux.

Install

mkdir -p ~/bin
curl -fsSL "https://github.com/Jeecabs/whiskd/releases/latest/download/whiskd-$(uname -m)-$(uname -s | tr A-Z a-z).tar.gz" | tar -xz -C ~/bin

Or cargo install --git https://github.com/Jeecabs/whiskd, or clone and run ./install.sh. Make sure ~/bin is on your PATH.

Agent skill: npx skills add Jeecabs/whiskd

Upgrading from 4.x or earlier (Node): stop running processes with the old version first, then npm uninstall -g whiskd.

Quick start

whiskd start --name api node server.js   # background, returns immediately
whiskd logs api                          # last 40 lines
whiskd attach api                        # live view (d = detach, q = kill)
whiskd stop api

whiskd npm run dev                       # foreground with a status bar

Commands

CommandWhat it does
whiskd <cmd...>Run in the foreground with a status bar
whiskd start [--name N] <cmd...>Run in the background
whiskd status [--json]List processes started from this directory
whiskd logs [name] [n]Print the last n lines (default 40)
whiskd attach [name]Live output view of a running process
whiskd top [--global]Dashboard of running processes (-g: all directories)
whiskd stop [name | --all]Stop one process, or all in this directory
whiskd cleanRemove stopped process state in this directory

When only one process exists, the name can be omitted.

Foreground / attach keys: d detach · p pause · q/Ctrl+C kill (press again to force)

Top keys: ↑↓/jk select · Enter/a attach · s stop · l logs · g global/local · q quit

How it works

  • No daemon. Each command reads state from disk and exits. Processes run in their own session, so closing the terminal or killing whiskd never takes them down.
  • State lives in /tmp/whiskd-<uid>/<cwd-hash>/<name>/ (output.log, pid, cmd, started, cwd). The directory is private to your user and scoped per directory, so a web process in one repo never collides with a web in another.
  • Names come from --name, or are derived from the command (npm run dev → dev, node server.js → server, go run . → directory name). A derived name gets a -2 suffix if taken. An explicit name that is already running is an error. --name must come before the command.
  • Commands run via /bin/sh -c. A single quoted string is passed raw, so "a && b" works. Multiple arguments are quoted one by one, so the grouping your shell resolved survives.
  • Startup failures: start waits ~300ms. If the command dies in that window, whiskd prints the reason and the last output, then exits with the command's code.
  • Stopping sends SIGTERM to the whole process group and SIGKILL to anything still alive after 2s. First it checks that the PID still belongs to the process whiskd started, so a reused PID is never killed by mistake.
  • Logs are capped at 10MB and get an exit footer (code or signal). A death discovered later is recorded as exited (status unknown). logs and top strip ANSI colors; attach shows them raw. Stopped state is pruned after 7 days.

Development

cargo test && ./test.sh

Pushing a v* tag builds release binaries.

License

MIT

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