v5.0.0

Full Changelog: v3.0.0...v5.0.0

whiskd v3.0.0

What changed

This release turns the old roo process wrapper into whiskd: same small tool, clearer name, safer state handling, and a more useful process dashboard.

The main user-facing change: whiskd top now shows running processes only. Stopped processes still exist for logs and cleanup, but they no longer clutter the live dashboard.

Highlights

• Renamed CLI from roo to whiskd

  • Install and run whiskd instead of roo.
  • The agent skill and docs now use the new name.

• Cleaner top dashboard

  • whiskd top and whiskd top --global now focus on live work: running processes only.
  • Stopped entries remain available through whiskd status, whiskd logs <name>, and whiskd clean.

• Safer process state

  • State moved to a private per-user directory: /tmp/whiskd-<uid>/....
  • State/log files use restrictive permissions.
  • Stale PID files are reconciled before commands act on them.
  • PID identity checks reduce the chance of acting on a reused PID.

• More reliable stopping and exit recording

  • Stops target whole process trees.
  • Termination escalates from SIGTERM to SIGKILL if needed.
  • Exit footers use a claim-first protocol to avoid duplicate footer writes during races.

• More robust TUI behavior

  • Foreground mode and attach now share the same attach implementation.
  • Terminal restore hooks run on normal exit, signals, and uncaught exceptions, reducing raw-mode/alt-screen leaks.
  • Logs are capped while top/attach are open, not only after process exit.

• Better shell command handling

  • Multi-argument commands preserve shell grouping more carefully.
  • Single-string commands still pass through raw, so shell operators like && continue to work.

Migration notes

If you previously used roo, switch commands to whiskd:

roo start --name api node server.js
# becomes
whiskd start --name api node server.js

Existing roo state is not migrated automatically. That is intentional: the new state path is part of the safety cleanup. Any old roo process state can be cleaned up separately if needed.

Install from GitHub:

npm install -g github:Jeecabs/whiskd

Or from a local checkout:

./install.sh

Verification

Checked before release:

npm run check
npm run smoke

v1.0.1

roo v1.0.1

Stability pass. Fixes three real crash / data-loss bugs, caps unbounded buffers, trims hot-path work, and adds a --version flag.

Fixed

• Foreground logging crash at 10 MB: writeLog used to end the stream after exceeding the cap and then crash on further writes. Now passes through and truncates on close.
• Truncation flush race on exit: truncation now runs inside the stream's end callback so the final bytes flush before the file is rewritten.
• stop --all left zombie processes: now escalates to SIGKILL for procs that ignored SIGTERM, matching single-target stop.
• ESRCH crash in stop: process.kill calls wrapped in try/catch for both single and --all paths.
• Pid file leak on spawn error: foreground child.on("error") now cleans up its pid file.
• Node 24 deprecation: switched spawn(cmd, args, { shell: true }) to spawn(cmd.join(" "), { shell: true }) to silence the deprecation warning that will become an error in a future Node.

Performance

• Unbounded pause buffers: foreground and attach pause buffers now cap at 2 MB and drop oldest chunks, so a paused noisy child no longer blows up RSS.
• Full-log slurp on display: attach pre-fill, roo logs, and top's logs view now tail-read the last 256 KB (1 MB for the TUI view) instead of loading the whole file.
• Per-chunk drawBar removed from foreground stdout/stderr handlers. The 1 s bar tick already redraws.
• Top tick caches immutable metadata: cmd and started are written once at process creation and never change, so the 1 s refresh now reads them once per process instead of every tick.

Added

• roo --version / roo -v prints the version.
• Internal helpers: killTree, forceKillTree, readLogTail.
• stripAnsi now uses util.stripVTControlCharacters (Node 16.11+).

Install

./install.sh

Requires Node.js. See README for full usage.

v1.0.0

roo v1.0.0

First stable release. roo is a lightweight process wrapper with a TUI status bar for running, backgrounding, attaching to, and managing long-running commands with automatic log capture.

Features

• Process wrapper: run any command under roo with a live TUI status bar
• Background processes: roo start runs detached, reattach later with roo attach
• Named processes: --name flag for easy reference in status, attach, stop
• roo top dashboard: live TUI view of running processes, with --global for all directories
• Status output: human-readable or --json for scripting
• Pause/unpause output streaming from the TUI (p key)
• Uptime display in the status bar
• Stderr color distinction in attached output
• Safe quit when viewing processes from top
• Empty-state messaging in top when no processes are running

Storage and housekeeping

• Logs stored under /tmp/roo/<cwd>/ mirroring project path hierarchy
• 7-day auto-prune of old process directories
• 10 MB cap per log file with rotation

Install

./install.sh

Requires Node.js. See README for full usage.