Sampler

Sampler is a command-line tool for executing shell commands, visualizing their output and raising alerts, all configured with a simple YAML file. The idea is that anything you can measure with a shell command can be shown as a live chart in the terminal, whether that is database changes, message queue depth or the completion of a deployment script. It is aimed at developers and operators who want quick insight without standing up a monitoring stack.

Using it is a three-step process: define the commands in a YAML configuration, run sampler with that file, and adjust the size and position of components on the screen. The README says it is not an alternative to full-scale monitoring systems, but a development tool for cases where setting up Prometheus and Grafana would be overkill. There are no servers, databases or deployments, and it can run locally while still collecting telemetry from multiple remote machines.

It can be installed with Homebrew, MacPorts, Linux package managers, Chocolatey (Windows support is experimental), or Docker. A system sound library is needed on Linux for audible alert tones. Sampler is written in Go and licensed under GPL-3.0.