Log Viewer

The log viewer shows output from a single project's process. It supports static snapshots and live streaming.

Opening Logs

Click the log icon on any project row, or open a project's detail panel and click "Logs". The viewer initializes with a static snapshot and resets whenever you open it for a different project.

Two Modes

Static Tail (default)

On open, the viewer fetches the last 1 000 lines via tail_logs. This is a one-shot snapshot from Process Compose's in-memory buffer. Click the refresh button (↻) in the header to re-fetch.

Follow Mode

Enable the Follow checkbox to switch to live streaming. The backend opens a subscribe_logs channel that polls the on-disk log file at 100 ms intervals and forwards each new line. The channel runs in a background thread until the checkbox is toggled off, the viewer is closed, or the app exits — whichever comes first.

When a project restarts, the log file is truncated. Follow mode detects the truncation (file size goes below the last-seen cursor) and re-opens from the beginning, inserting a --- log truncated; re-attached --- marker inline.

If the log file does not exist yet (project newly added, daemon not yet started), Follow waits up to 30 seconds for the file to appear before giving up.

Log File Location

~/Library/Application Support/PortBay/logs/<project-id>.log

The file is written by Process Compose. Follow mode tails this file directly rather than using PC's WebSocket endpoint, which avoids framing differences across PC minor versions.

What Is Captured

The viewer captures everything the project's start command writes to stdout and stderr. Process Compose wraps each line in a JSON envelope:

{"level":"info","process":"web","replica":0,"message":"> next dev"}

The viewer unwraps the message field for display. Lines that do not match the envelope format (plain output from tools that bypass PC's capture) pass through verbatim.

ANSI Colors

ANSI escape sequences are rendered to HTML using the app's theme color tokens. The following severity levels are detected and color-coded:

Level	Detection
error	ERROR, FATAL, PANIC tokens; error:, [error], npm err!, command failed patterns
warn	WARN, WARNING tokens; warn:, [warn], deprecated, unsupported engine patterns
debug	JSON envelope level field debug or trace
info	Everything else (default, no extra color)

Error lines also receive a faint red background. The detection is intentionally specific — phrases like "0 errors" do not trigger the error color.

Search

Press / to focus the search field, or click it directly. Matches are highlighted across all rendered lines. Use n / N to jump to the next or previous match, or the chevron buttons in the header. The x/y counter shows the current position.

Search operates on the stripped plain text (ANSI codes and PC envelope removed), so the query matches what you see.

Buffer Limit

The in-memory buffer is capped at 5 000 lines. When Follow mode pushes the buffer over that limit, the oldest 1 000 lines are dropped to keep DOM size bounded under chatty servers.

Other Controls

Control	Action
Refresh button (↻)	Re-fetch the static 1 000-line snapshot
Copy button	Copies all rendered plain-text lines to the clipboard
Click outside / Escape	Close the viewer