Perch

A local mission-control dashboard for developers. Monitor every service, port, process, and log on your machine from a single unified interface.

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What is Perch?

Modern local development is chaos. You have a Next.js frontend on port 3000, an Express API on 4000, a database on 5432, a Redis instance somewhere, a Docker container you forgot about, and six terminal tabs open — each showing a different service's logs. You don't know which process owns which port, why a service went down, or where your bottlenecks are.

Perch fixes this.

Perch is a lightweight desktop client and background daemon that continuously monitors your entire local machine and aggregates everything into a single premium developer dashboard. Think of it as Vercel or Railway for localhost — keeping your entire development ecosystem visible at a glance.

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Core Features (V2 Edition)

1. HTTP Request Inspector

• Dynamic proxying to intercept and debug localhost traffic.
• Real-time logging of HTTP methods, routes, response status codes, header tables, and execution latency.
• Start and stop port traffic interception with a single click in the UI.

2. Process Dependency Graph

• Auto-discovered service architectures visualised in an interactive node-link dependency graph.
• Visual indicators showing service states (healthy, warning, offline) and active port traffic directions.

3. System Tray Mode

• Native Electron integration that enables Perch to run unobtrusively in your system tray.
• Closing the window minimizes Perch to the tray, keeping the polling agent alive in the background.
• Quick-access tray menus to open the dashboard, check status, start/stop daemon, or quit the app.

4. Process Crash Alerts

• Real-time notifications and toast warnings when monitored services crash or terminate unexpectedly.
• Detailed debug logs, signals, and exit codes surfaced instantly to pinpoint failures.

5. Port Reservation & Violation Detection

• Declare expected port mappings in your configuration (e.g., PostgreSQL on 5432).
• Spot port conflicts immediately. If another process hijacks a reserved port, it highlights the violation and offers one-click port swapping.

6. Interactive Config File Editor

• Edit, update, and manage your perch.config.json directly from the dashboard.
• Live JSON schema validation prevents formatting mistakes or invalid fields before applying changes.

7. CPU & Memory Sparklines

• Resource-dense process tables featuring micro-sparkline charts that show CPU and Memory trends over time.

8. Startup & Uptime Tracking

• Real-time uptime badges showing exactly how long each process has been alive, complete with milliseconds-level granularity.

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Installation & Setup

Global Production Install (Recommended)

1. Clone the repository and install root dependencies:

   npm install

2. Build the packages (Agent and UI):

   npm run build

3. Link the package globally to install the CLI tool:

   npm link

4. Start the Perch system:

   perch start

Development Mode

Run the following command in the root folder to start both the daemon (port 7777) and the React UI (port 3000) concurrently:

npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

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CLI Command Usage

Use the globally linked perch CLI command to easily control the background daemon:

# Start the background daemon
perch start

# Show current daemon status (running state, uptime, active process count)
perch status

# Stop the daemon completely
perch stop

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Windows Support

Perch is fully optimized for Windows systems:

• All shell processes are launched invisibly using native child process safe-spawning (windowsHide: true).
• Daemon processes run smoothly in the background without causing intrusive cmd window flashes.
• Clean tray integration handles standard process cleanups and window visibility hooks.

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Architecture

Perch operates as a split-architecture system:

┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│        Perch Desktop App (Electron Tray)      │
│   Serves UI dashboard & registers tray icon   │
│                                               │
│  Nav Rail │ Process List │ HTTP Inspector     │
│  Graph    │ Config Ed    │ Resource Badges    │
└───────────────────────┬───────────────────────┘
                        │ IPC / WebSocket
┌───────────────────────▼───────────────────────┐
│            Perch Daemon (Node.js)             │
│   Listens on port 7777 (HTTP / WebSocket)     │
│                                               │
│  Process Monitor   │  Port Scanner            │
│  http-proxy Server │  Env File Watcher        │
│  Health Checker    │  Config Validator        │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

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Configuration

Customise your dashboard workspace by placing a perch.config.json file in your project directory:

{
  "version": "1.0",
  "daemonPort": 7777,
  "pollInterval": 2000,
  "reservedPorts": {
    "3000": "NextJS App",
    "5432": "Database"
  },
  "groups": [
    {
      "id": "frontend",
      "name": "Frontend Services",
      "services": [
        {
          "id": "web",
          "name": "React Client",
          "command": "npm run dev",
          "cwd": "./apps/web",
          "expectedPort": 3000,
          "autoRestart": true
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

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Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Cmd/Ctrl + K	Open command palette
Cmd/Ctrl + W	Kill selected process
Cmd/Ctrl + R	Restart selected process
↑ / ↓	Navigate process list
Enter	Select / expand process
Esc	Clear search / close panels

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Tech Stack

• Desktop Framework: Electron
• Web UI: React + Zustand (Themed with CSS Custom Properties)
• Daemon Runtime: Node.js + Express + WebSocket
• Proxy Core: http-proxy
• Process Intelligence: ps-list, pidusage, node-netstat, chokidar

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License

MIT © 2026 Perch Contributors