# tj/mon

mon(1) - Simple single-process process monitoring program written in C

Repository: https://github.com/tj/mon
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/mon
Language: C
License Family: other
Last push: 2016-09-07T15:22:47+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5257, "days_push": 3647, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1075, forks 98 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:29.161397+00:00)

## What it is
mon(1) is a tiny single-process process monitoring program written in C that keeps a command running, restarting it when it exits. It supports daemonization, pidfiles, retry limits, and hooks to run commands on restart or error.

## Use cases
- keep a program running and restart it when it crashes
- daemonize a long-running command with a pidfile
- run a script when a monitored process fails or restarts
- replace monit with a simpler lightweight supervisor
- monitor a single service with minimal memory overhead

## When to choose
- you need a dead-simple, low-memory process supervisor for one command
- you find monit or systemd unit setup too complex for a quick job
- you want restart/error hook scripts with retry limits

## When to avoid
- you need to monitor multiple programs with one tool
- you need an actively maintained project with security patches
- you need clustering, web UI, or rich alerting integrations

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: abandoned
- function: monitoring, alerting, cli
- domain: monitoring, self-hosted
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: process-monitoring, process-supervisor, c, daemon, restart-on-crash, devops, command-line, linux, macos

## Member repositories
- tj/mon (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:29.161397+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 2026-08-30T06:53:28.547670+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/tj/mon (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:29.161397+00:00, sha 80ccfc136fab)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.