# mthenw/frontail

📝 streaming logs to the browser. Sponsored by https://cloudash.dev

Repository: https://github.com/mthenw/frontail
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/frontail
Homepage: https://cloudash.dev
Language: JavaScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: stream-logs, tail, syslog, devops, log-stream, log-viewer
Last push: 2023-11-12T18:53:23+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5271, "days_push": 1025, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1864, forks 240 (observed 2026-08-28T04:05:46.116392+00:00)

## What it is
frontail is a Node.js application that streams log files to the browser, like `tail -F` with a web UI. It supports log rotation, auto-scrolling, search, highlighting, themes, multiple files, stdin, and basic authentication.

## Use cases
- stream server logs to a browser in real time
- tail syslog with a web interface
- watch multiple log files from one page
- share live logs with a team during debugging
- view container logs in a browser via Docker

## When to choose
- you want a zero-config, self-hosted web UI for tailing local log files
- you need quick live log visibility on a server without a full log aggregation stack
- you want lightweight log streaming with search, highlighting, and basic auth

## When to avoid
- you need centralized log aggregation, retention, or querying across many hosts
- you need structured log analysis or alerting rather than simple tailing
- you need Windows log rotation support, which is not available

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: maintenance
- function: logging, http-server, developer-tools, streaming
- domain: monitoring, developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: log-viewer, tail, syslog, realtime-logs, browser-ui, devops, command-line, nodejs, docker, web-server

## Member repositories
- mthenw/frontail (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:46.116392+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T03:15:36.651620+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/mthenw/frontail (fetched 2026-08-28T04:05:46.116392+00:00, sha 5c4f46156dfc)
  - homepage: https://cloudash.dev (fetched 2026-08-29T10:54:48.858185+00:00, sha bbf049d04377)
  - site_page: https://cloudash.dev/about (fetched 2026-08-29T10:54:48.869272+00:00, sha 9fc144fcf8a2)
  - registry_npm: https://registry.npmjs.org/frontail (fetched 2026-08-29T10:54:48.871095+00:00, sha 58ef8dd96102)
  - site_page: https://cloudash.dev/pricing (fetched 2026-08-29T10:54:48.867303+00:00, sha d86d1999ca57)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.