Built · ~30 minutes
llv
A local log viewer that tails Rails' development.log and turns the noise into a readable master/detail view, grouped by request.
Built with: Ruby · Sinatra-style web UI · TUI · RubyGem
Rails has “beautiful” trashy, noisy, unreadable garbage logs that it vomits uselessly into your terminal. I disagree with DHH on many many things and “Rails logs are beautiful” is one of them. We can do much better.
llv is a standalone CLI that tails development.log, groups lines by request (or background job) using Rails’ tagged logging, and shows them in a master/detail view — in the browser by default, or as a TUI if you prefer to stay in the terminal. Select a request on the left, read its full story on the right, instead of scrolling through interleaved output from six concurrent requests.
How it was built
Just Ruby!
I wrote a bit more about it in ‘SaaS is dead; Long live SaaS!’ but it basically took about 30 minutes between other work to build a working version and then, for good measure, I threw in a TUI.