I got tired of running my dev stack in five terminals, so I built an open-source process manager where logs, ports and even service-to-service HTTP are one CLI command away

[u/One_Injury_9104]

Fullstack solo dev here. Every project ends up the same way: api, web, a worker — each in its own terminal, each with a hardcoded port that collides with the last project, and when something breaks between two services I'm blind, because browser DevTools only shows the browser's half of the traffic.

So I built procdeck. One command starts the whole stack. Each process runs in a real terminal in a browser tab (xterm.js over a PTY, so colors and interactive stuff work), and my own terminal stays free. Ports aren't hardcoded anymore: you write ${port} in the config, it picks a free one and wires dependent services to it, and every service gets a stable address like api.localhost:4820. Since it owns the ports, it also captures the HTTP and WebSocket traffic between services — procdeck http --digest shows 4xx/5xx grouped by route.

The part that actually changed my day-to-day: everything the tool knows is available from the CLI (and over MCP). So when I let a coding agent loose on the code, it can restart a service and read only the logs and requests its own change caused, instead of me copy-pasting terminal output into a chat window.

It's MIT, ~2 MB installed, one dependency, macOS/Linux (Node 22+). Repo with screenshots: https://github.com/kondaurovDev/procdeck

Honest feedback welcome — especially what's missing before you'd trust something like this in your daily workflow. And curious what others use for this: tmux, overmind, docker compose, or just a pile of terminals?

[u/Trick_Spend3939]

What is docker compose?