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Getting Started

Quickstart

Start your first processes with pboss, watch them in the live list, open the dashboard, and make them survive reboots.

Five minutes from zero to supervised processes. Every command below is copy-pasteable — see the CLI reference for the full flag list.

Start a process#

pboss start app.ts

pboss spawns a daemon (if one isn’t running yet), starts your script under supervision, and returns. If the process crashes, pboss restarts it automatically.

Start with a name and options:

pboss start app.ts --name my-api --instances 4 --port 3000

List processes#

pboss list
┌────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────┬───────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐
│ ID │ Name     │ Status   │ PID  │ CPU   │ Memory   │ Restarts │ Uptime   │
├────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────┼───────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┤
│ 0  │ my-api-0 │ online   │ 4521 │ 0.3%  │ 42.1 MB  │ 0        │ 5m 23s  │
│ 1  │ my-api-1 │ online   │ 4522 │ 0.2%  │ 39.8 MB  │ 0        │ 5m 23s  │
│ 2  │ my-api-2 │ online   │ 4523 │ 0.4%  │ 41.3 MB  │ 0        │ 5m 23s  │
│ 3  │ my-api-3 │ online   │ 4524 │ 0.1%  │ 40.5 MB  │ 0        │ 5m 23s  │
└────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────┴───────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘

Want it live-updating? pboss list --live refreshes the table in place (press q to quit).

Tail the logs#

pboss logs my-api

stdout and stderr are captured to ~/.pboss/logs/<name>-<id>-{out,error}.log automatically — see Logs.

Open the dashboard#

pboss dashboard
⚡ Dashboard running at http://localhost:9615
📊 Prometheus metrics at http://localhost:9616/metrics

A self-contained web dashboard with live charts, process controls, and a log viewer — no external dependencies. See Dashboard.

Survive a reboot#

Nothing to do — it is the default. The install already set up the boot service, and pboss saves your process list automatically after every change. On boot, the daemon starts and resurrects your apps. The first pboss start tells you where persistence stands in one line, so the default is never a silent surprise.

pboss start my-api.ts   # saved automatically, resurrected at every boot
pboss startup status    # read-only: service installed? daemon up? what a
                        # reboot would restore

If the boot service could not be installed automatically (for example a host without a user systemd session), one command fixes it — no sudo needed:

pboss startup install

Details in Startup scripts.

Where to go next#

  • First-class JS/TS. pboss itself runs on Bun, Node.js, or Deno — and manages JavaScript and TypeScript natively (Bun → Deno → Node with tsx) — see Runtimes.
  • Multiple services, one repo? Declare them in an ecosystem file.
  • Running more instances? Read Cluster mode.
  • Deploying to containers? Use foreground mode.
  • Want fleet-wide visibility? Link the machine with ProcBoss Cloud.
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