Ward

Ward is a zero-dependency, lightweight process supervisor written in Go.

You define your processes in a TOML file. Ward keeps them running, tells you when they crash and lets you tail their output in real time.

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Why not just use...

Docker Compose - requires Docker, which on a $5 VPS costs more RAM than your application. Ward is a single 8MB binary.

supervisord - requires Python, hasn't been meaningfully maintained in years, and its config syntax is painful. Ward uses TOML.

systemd - two unit files per process, no decent logs -f equivalent, and writing them correctly requires reading documentation every time. Ward has one config file for everything.

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Quick Start

# ~/.config/ward/ward.toml

[[process]]
name = "api"
command = "/usr/local/bin/my-api"
args = ["--port", "8080"]
restart = "always"

ward up

That's it. Ward starts your process, restarts it if it crashes, and keeps its output available.

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Installation

make build
sudo make install

Or download a prebuilt binary from the releases page.

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Configuration

[settings]
socket_path = "/tmp/ward.sock"
db_path     = "~/.local/share/ward/ward.db"
pid_path    = "/tmp/ward.pid"

[[process]]
name          = "api"
command       = "/usr/local/bin/my-api"
args          = ["--port", "8080"]
dir           = "/home/user/myapp"
env           = { PORT = "8080", LOG_LEVEL = "info" }
restart       = "always"      # always | on-failure | never
restart_delay = "5s"
max_restarts  = 0             # 0 = unlimited
grace_period  = "10s"
stdout        = "inherit"     # inherit | discard | /absolute/path/to/file
stderr        = "inherit"
autostart     = true

restart = "always" restarts on any exit. on-failure only restarts on non-zero exit codes. never runs the process once and doesn't touch it again.

stdout = "inherit" pipes output through the Ward daemon, which you can redirect however you like when starting it. Set it to an absolute path to write directly to a file.

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Commands

# Daemon
ward up               # start the daemon (foreground)
ward down             # stop the daemon and all processes
ward reload           # hot-reload config without downtime

# Processes
ward status           # show all processes
ward status api       # show detailed status for one process
ward start api
ward stop api
ward restart api

# Logs
ward logs api         # last 50 lines
ward logs api -n 100  # last 100 lines
ward logs -f api      # live stream, survives crashes and restarts

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Running on Boot (systemd)

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp ward.service ~/.config/systemd/user/ward.service
systemctl --user enable ward
systemctl --user start ward

Check Ward's own output:

journalctl --user -u ward -f