Beacon CLI

Live-tail logs from your terminal.

The Beacon CLI is a small Node script you can install in one curl. Sign in once with email OTP, then stream any service in real time, filter by level, grep, or pipe to jq.

Why the binary is called logwatch

The CLI binary is named logwatch for backward compatibility — existing shell aliases, CI scripts, and saved commands keep working. The product is Beacon; the binary just kept its original identifier.

Install

shell

$ curl -fsSL https://beacon.repoless.com/install | sh
# downloads to ~/.logwatch/bin/logwatch
# add ~/.logwatch/bin to PATH if it isn't already
$ export PATH="$HOME/.logwatch/bin:$PATH"

The script is idempotent — rerun it to update.

Prompts for your email and a 6-digit OTP, then writes a session token to ~/.logwatch/token (mode 0600). Same OTP system as the dashboard — sign in once for both.

shell

$ logwatch login
email: you@example.com
code: 123456
✓ signed in as you@example.com

logwatch apps

Lists every service you have access to, with line count.

shell

$ logwatch apps
SERVICE                         LINES        LAST SEEN
acme-api-web                    1,293,521    just now
acme-api-worker                 224,146      19s ago
acme-checkout-web               81,002       2m ago
…

logwatch tail

Streams live log lines for a service. Multiple flag combinations:

--since 30m — replay before tailing (e.g. last 30 minutes, 1h, 24h)
--filter level=error — facet filters
--grep PATTERN — regex on msg
--json — machine-readable NDJSON output (pipe to jq)
--server URL — override server (defaults to https://beacon.repoless.com)

shell

$ logwatch tail acme-api-web
[14:02:11] acme-api-web  GET /v1/users 200 · 18ms
[14:02:11] acme-api-web  GET /v1/orders 200 · 24ms
[14:02:12] acme-api-web  POST /v1/checkout 500 · 1240ms

logwatch logout

Removes the local token and revokes the session server-side. Useful when you've been signed in on a shared machine.

shell

$ logwatch logout
✓ signed out

Token & env

~/.logwatch/token — session token written by login.
LOGWATCH_TOKEN — environment variable; overrides the file. Useful in CI.
--token VALUE — flag; overrides both file and env.

Recipes

Slow requests in the last 5 minutes

shell

$ logwatch tail acme-api-web --since 5m --json \
  | jq 'select(.duration_ms > 100)'

Errors only, with color

shell

$ logwatch tail acme-api-web --filter level=error

Tail multiple services side-by-side

shell

# Use shell job control
$ logwatch tail acme-api-web    &
$ logwatch tail acme-api-worker &
$ wait