Perfmon: A Cleaner Terminal View for System Health
Operators often jump between top, vmstat, ss, and other commands just to answer a basic question: what is this host doing right now? Perfmon pulls those signals into one lightweight terminal UI, which makes fast checks easier during incidents, deploys, and routine health reviews.
What is Perfmon?
Perfmon is an open-source terminal performance monitor built in Go with Bubble Tea. It combines live sparklines, tabbed views, and configurable command output in a single interface. Instead of replacing your usual Linux tools, it wraps them into a cleaner workflow that is easier to scan when you are moving quickly.
Key Features
- Tabbed system views: switch between focused monitoring tabs instead of stacking commands across several terminals
- Live sparklines: track CPU, memory, load, and network trends at a glance
- Low overhead: written in Go and designed for quick startup with minimal resource use
- Custom command tabs: add your own commands through a simple TOML config file
- Cross-platform defaults: works with sensible defaults on Linux and macOS
Installation
Install the latest release with Go:
go install github.com/sumant1122/Perfmon@latest
Or build it from source:
git clone https://github.com/sumant1122/Perfmon.git
cd Perfmon
make build
Usage
Start Perfmon with the default system views:
perfmon
Once it opens, use Tab and Shift+Tab to move between tabs, j and k to scroll command output, and t to switch themes.
A simple custom config can turn Perfmon into a compact incident cockpit:
global_refresh_interval = "5s"
[[tab]]
title = "Process Explorer"
cmd = ["top", "-b", "-n", "1"]
refresh_interval = "2s"
[[tab]]
title = "Network Connections"
cmd = ["ss", "-tulpn"]
Operational Tips
Perfmon works best as a fast first-look tool. Add tabs for commands your team already trusts, such as kubectl top nodes, journalctl -p err -n 50, or ss -s, and keep the refresh rate conservative on busy production hosts. It is especially useful in SSH sessions where you want one clear screen instead of a maze of split panes.
Conclusion
Perfmon will not replace full observability stacks, but it does make host-level triage faster and less noisy. For SREs who live in the terminal, that is a very practical win.
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