lazyansible

A terminal UI for Ansible — manage inventories, run playbooks, stream logs.
Inspired by lazydocker.

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Why lazyansible?

Running Ansible from the CLI is powerful but low-visibility: you get a wall of text, no easy host status overview, and no way to navigate your inventory interactively.

lazyansible wraps Ansible in a panel-based TUI that shows inventory, playbooks, per-host status, and streaming logs — all in one terminal window, all keyboard-driven.

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Features

• Inventory Explorer — browse INI, YAML, and JSON inventories as a collapsible tree; set host/group limits with a single keypress
• Playbook Runner — discover and run playbooks with --check, --diff, tags, extra-vars and limit; see the exact command echoed in the log panel
• Live Log Streaming — colorised output with TASK/PLAY section headers, scroll, search, and level filter (failed / changed / ok)
• Per-host Status — real-time ok / changed / failed / unreachable counters for every host
• Ansible Vault — auto-detects encrypted files; set the password once and it's used for every run
• Ad-hoc Commands — run any Ansible module against any host or group, with optional --become
• Run History — every run is persisted; browse and re-run any past execution
• Role Browser — inspect tasks, defaults, handlers, and dependencies; run a role directly
• Ansible Galaxy — browse installed roles and collections, install new ones with live output
• SSH Profiles — save named connection configurations and apply them as extra-vars
• Run Profiles — save the full run configuration (playbook + limit + tags + extra-vars + flags) as a named profile
• Multi-environment — hot-swap inventory files at runtime without restarting
• Inline Editor — open any playbook or group_vars/host_vars file in $EDITOR without leaving the TUI
• Desktop Notifications — get notified when a long run completes (Linux: notify-send, macOS: osascript)
• Config File — persistent defaults via ~/.lazyansible/config.yml

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Installation

Homebrew (macOS / Linux)

brew install kocierik/lazyansible/lazyansible

AUR (Arch Linux)

yay -S lazyansible-bin

Or with any other AUR helper:

paru -S lazyansible-bin

Scoop (Windows)

scoop bucket add lazyansible https://github.com/kocierik/scoop-lazyansible
scoop install lazyansible

go install

go install github.com/kocierik/lazyansible/cmd/lazyansible@latest

From source

git clone https://github.com/kocierik/lazyansible
cd lazyansible
go build -o lazyansible ./cmd/lazyansible
sudo mv lazyansible /usr/local/bin/

Requirements

• ansible-playbook in $PATH
• ansible (for ad-hoc commands)
• ansible-lint (optional — for lint integration)
• ansible-galaxy (optional — for Galaxy browser)
• notify-send on Linux or terminal-notifier on macOS (optional — for desktop notifications)
• Go 1.22+ (only required for building from source)

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Quick Start

# Auto-discover inventory and playbooks in the current directory
lazyansible

# Specify an inventory file
lazyansible -i inventories/production.yml

# Specify a playbook directory
lazyansible -d playbooks/

# Both
lazyansible -i inventories/staging.yaml -d playbooks/

# Disable mouse capture (allows native terminal text selection)
lazyansible --no-mouse

# Create an annotated config file at ~/.lazyansible/config.yml
lazyansible --init-config

Auto-discovery

When no flags are given, lazyansible searches for inventory and playbook files in the current directory and its parent, checking the following names in order:

Type	Candidates
Inventory	First match wins, in order: inventory, hosts, inventory.ini, then inventory.yml / .yaml, inventory.json, hosts.json, hosts.yml / .yaml; also inventories/* in . and ..
Playbooks	all .yml / .yaml files in playbooks/, ., and ..

Config file

# ~/.lazyansible/config.yml

# Default inventory (same as -i flag)
# inventory: ./inventories/hosts.yml

# Default playbook directory (same as -d flag)
# playbook_dir: ./playbooks

# Disable mouse so you can select terminal text normally
# no_mouse: false

# Send a desktop notification when a run completes
notify_on_finish: true

# Start with --check / --diff pre-enabled
# default_check_mode: false
# default_diff_mode: false

CLI flags always override config file values.

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Keyboard Reference

Navigation

Key	Action
tab / shift+tab	Cycle focus between panels
1 2 3 4	Jump directly to Inventory / Playbooks / Status / Logs
j / k	Move cursor down / up
g / G	Jump to top / bottom
?	Toggle help overlay
q / ctrl+c	Quit (cancels active run)

Inventory panel

Key	Action
enter / space	Expand / collapse group
enter on host or group	Set as run limit
E	Open host_vars / group_vars file in $EDITOR (creates if missing)
!	Ad-hoc command runner for selected host / group

Playbooks panel

Key	Action
r / enter	Run selected playbook
c	Toggle --check mode
d	Toggle --diff mode
t	Tags browser (multi-select with filter)
V	Set --extra-vars
L	Run ansible-lint on selected playbook
space	View playbook YAML source with syntax highlighting
E	Open selected playbook in $EDITOR
!	Ad-hoc command runner

Logs panel

Key	Action
j / k	Scroll down / up one line
ctrl+d / ctrl+u	Half-page scroll
G	Jump to bottom (resume auto-scroll)
Z	Toggle fullscreen logs
/	Open inline search bar
n / N	Jump to next / previous search match
f	Cycle log level filter: all → failed → changed → ok → warning
T	Toggle timestamps
ctrl+l	Clear logs

Global overlays

Key	Action
ctrl+V	Ansible Vault password prompt
H	Run history browser (browse and re-run past executions)
R	Retry failed hosts from last run
O	Role browser (inspect and run roles)
N	Switch environment / inventory file at runtime
P	SSH profile manager
A	Ansible Galaxy browser (list and install roles / collections)
F	Run profiles — save or load named run configurations
I	Live-reload inventory and playbooks
X	Export run summary as a Markdown file

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Project Layout

cmd/lazyansible/          Entry point, CLI flag parsing
internal/
  core/                   Domain types — Inventory, Host, Group, Playbook, LogLine
  inventory/
    parser.go             INI + YAML + JSON inventory parser; loads group_vars / host_vars
    playbooks.go          Playbook discovery and tag extraction
  runner/
    runner.go             ansible-playbook / ansible execution with live streaming
  history/                Run records persisted in ~/.lazyansible/history/
  vault/                  Vault-file detection and temp password-file helper
  roles/                  Role scanner (tasks, defaults, handlers, meta)
  ssh/                    SSH profile persistence (~/.lazyansible/ssh-profiles.json)
  galaxy/                 ansible-galaxy CLI wrapper
  runprofiles/            Named run config persistence
  notify/                 Desktop notification helper (notify-send / osascript)
  config/                 User config loader (~/.lazyansible/config.yml)
  editor/                 $EDITOR launcher via tea.ExecProcess
  ui/
    app.go                Root Bubble Tea model — layout, keybindings, state machine
    styles.go             Lip Gloss colour palette and shared overlay styles
    adhoc_overlay.go      Ad-hoc command form
    extravars_overlay.go  --extra-vars text input
    tags_overlay.go       Tags multi-select browser
    vault_overlay.go      Vault password input
    history_overlay.go    Run history browser
    roles_overlay.go      Two-pane role browser
    envswitch_overlay.go  Runtime inventory switcher
    sshprofile_overlay.go SSH profile manager
    galaxy_overlay.go     Ansible Galaxy browser
    runprofiles_overlay.go Run profile save/load
    playbookviewer_overlay.go YAML source viewer
    export.go             Markdown run-report exporter
    panels/
      inventory.go        Inventory tree panel
      playbooks.go        Playbook list panel
      status.go           Per-host status panel
      logs.go             Streaming log panel with search and filter

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.

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License

MIT