CLI Reference

Dev Cockpit is a TUI first, but every read-only view has a command-line equivalent. These are built for piping into other tools, dropping into a shell script, or getting an answer without leaving what you were doing.

Output is plain text when redirected or piped, and coloured when written to a terminal, so devcockpit status > report.txt gives you clean text with no escape codes.

Commands at a glance

Command	What it does
devcockpit	Launch the interactive TUI
devcockpit status	Quick system status and health score
devcockpit diag	Full diagnostics report
devcockpit ps	Process list, top 15 by CPU
devcockpit services	Homebrew service status
devcockpit security	Security feature status
devcockpit cleanup list	Show cache sizes without deleting
devcockpit cleanup empty-trash	Empty the trash
devcockpit update	Update to the latest version
devcockpit uninstall	Remove Dev Cockpit from the system

Global flags

Flag	Effect
--help, -h	Show help
--version, -v	Show version information
--debug	Launch with debug logging streamed to the console
--logs	Print the debug log file location

status

A one-screen summary: CPU, memory and disk usage, followed by a health score and the individual checks behind it.

devcockpit status

Dev Cockpit v3.0.0 — Quick Status
───────────────────────────────
  CPU                8.9%
  Memory             64.0% (10.2 GB / 16.0 GB)
  Disk               23.9% (350.5 GB free)

  Health Score       ███████████████████░ 95/100 [A]

  ✓ Disk               OK    23.9% used (350.5 GB free)
  ✓ Storage            OK    3 caches, 1.0 GB total
  ✓ Performance        OK    2 heavy process(es), within normal range
  ⚠ Network            WARN  High latency — DNS 1042 ms, GW 45 ms
  ✓ Services           OK    0 running, 0 stopped (of 0)
  ✓ Security           OK    All security features enabled

The health score is a weighted roll-up of the six checks. Anything below an OK is worth a look with devcockpit diag.

diag

The long form of status. Every check is expanded with the measurements behind it and concrete suggestions when something is wrong.

devcockpit diag

Reach for this when status shows a WARN or CRIT and you want to know why rather than just that.

ps

Process list, sorted and truncated.

devcockpit ps                      # top 15 by CPU
devcockpit ps --sort mem --top 5   # top 5 by memory
devcockpit ps --sort pid --top 50  # 50 processes by PID

Flag	Values	Default
--sort	cpu, mem, pid	cpu
--top	any positive integer	15

Because output is plain when piped, this composes normally:

devcockpit ps --sort mem --top 50 | grep node

services

Status of your Homebrew services. Useful for answering "is Postgres actually running?" without brew services list and its startup cost.

devcockpit services

security

Reports on the platform's security features. On macOS that means the firewall, FileVault and System Integrity Protection. On Linux it reports the equivalent available checks.

devcockpit security

This is read-only. Dev Cockpit never changes a security setting from the CLI.

cleanup

cleanup is deliberately split so that inspecting and deleting are different commands.

devcockpit cleanup list          # show cache sizes, deletes nothing
devcockpit cleanup empty-trash   # empty the trash

cleanup list is always safe to run. For anything more selective than emptying the trash, use the Cleanup module in the TUI, where you can see and choose each target before it is removed.

update

devcockpit update            # check, confirm, then install
devcockpit update --check    # report only, change nothing
devcockpit update --force    # skip the confirmation prompt

Updates are verified before they are installed. Dev Cockpit downloads the published SHA-256 checksum alongside the binary and refuses to install if it does not match, if the checksum is missing, or if it cannot be read. The old binary is backed up first and restored automatically if the replacement fails to run.

uninstall

devcockpit uninstall           # confirm, then remove
devcockpit uninstall --force   # no confirmation

Removes the binary. Your configuration directory at ~/.devcockpit is left in place, so reinstalling keeps your settings. Delete it by hand if you want a clean slate:

rm -rf ~/.devcockpit

Files

Path	Contents
~/.devcockpit/config.yaml	Configuration, see Configuration
~/.devcockpit/debug.log	Debug log, written when --debug is used
~/.devcockpit/data/	Metrics history database

See also

• Modules for what each TUI screen does
• Configuration for every setting and its default
• Troubleshooting when something misbehaves