A local web dashboard that discovers and manages your JavaScript dev servers. Open a browser tab at localhost:7770 and see every project in ~/Code/ — what's running, on which port, and controls to start or stop any of them.
The problem: Developers working across many projects inevitably lose track of which dev servers are running and which ports they're occupying. The typical workflow — lsof -i, kill -9, re-running scripts — is manual, error-prone, and interrupts focus.
How Localhost solves it: It continuously scans your projects directory and enumerates OS-level TCP listeners to build a real-time picture of every dev server on your machine. Detection is passive — it finds servers regardless of how they were started (terminal, IDE, background script). No configuration, no project-level setup. Just open a tab.
Localhost is a two-layer local application with no database and no external APIs.
Backend — Node.js + Hono, running on port 7769. Five services:
- Scanner — walks
~/Code/to find npm, pnpm, and yarn projects - Listener Scanner — enumerates OS TCP listeners via
lsofand matches them to discovered projects by working directory - Process Manager — spawns and kills dev server processes
- Config Store — persists per-project settings (preferred port, start script, etc.)
- SSE Broadcaster — pushes state updates to connected frontends in real time
Frontend — Lit web components served via Vite on port 7770. Four components backed by three reactive stores that stay in sync with the backend over SSE.
Communication pattern: REST for commands (start, stop, configure) flowing frontend to backend. Server-Sent Events for state updates flowing backend to frontend. This keeps the UI reactive without polling.
- TypeScript — throughout
- Node.js + Hono — backend API
- Lit — web components for the frontend
- Tailwind CSS — styling
- Vite — dev server and build tooling
- Biome — linting and formatting
- Vitest — testing
pnpm install
pnpm devThe dashboard will be available at localhost:7770. The backend API runs on port 7769.