| without errbuddy | with errbuddy |
|---|---|
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npm install -g errbuddyOption A — Automatic (recommended)
eb initInstalls a shell hook — every command you run gets errbuddy interception automatically. No prefix needed ever again.
Option B — Explicit
eb run <your command>No setup required. Prefix any command to run it through errbuddy.
# after eb init — no changes to how you work
npm run dev
python manage.py runserver
go run .
cargo run
# explicit mode — works anywhere, no setup
eb run npm run dev
eb run python manage.py runserver
eb run go run .
eb run cargo run
# full diagnostic output
eb run -v npm run dev| Runtime | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Node.js / TypeScript | TypeError, ECONNREFUSED, module not found, unhandled rejections, heap OOM |
| Python | Tracebacks, ModuleNotFoundError, import errors |
| Go | Runtime panics, goroutine dumps, build errors |
| Rust | Compiler errors (E-codes), thread panics |
| Java / JVM | Uncaught exceptions, stack traces |
| Docker | Daemon errors, missing images |
| Prisma | P-codes, init failures, constraint violations |
| Next.js | Compilation failures, unresolved modules |
| Rails | ActiveRecord errors, routing errors |
| PostgreSQL | Auth failures, role errors, connection refused |
| Generic | HTTP 4xx/5xx, disk full (ENOSPC), port conflicts |
errbuddy spawns your command as a child process and pipes stdout through untouched in real time. It watches stderr with a two-tier hybrid detector:
| Tier | Regex | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Known | Anchored patterns for 11 runtimes | Full panel — title, why, fix suggestions |
| Heuristic | Broad keyword net (error, failed, exception, internal server error, …) |
Minimal panel — reformatted, no fake explanation |
| Passthrough | Everything else | Written to stderr as-is, untouched |
When a known error is detected, it runs the raw text through a classify → explain → suggest pipeline and replaces the noise with a clean panel. When an unknown error is detected, it shows a minimal panel with no invented explanation. Unrecognised output passes through untouched — errbuddy stays silent unless it has something useful to say.
Duplicate errors within a 10-second window are suppressed and counted, so long-running servers don't flood the terminal with the same panel.
Verbose mode keeps the same panel, then adds the signature, confidence, runtime, and raw error details underneath.
══════════════════════
❌ Connection Refused
══════════════════════
📍 Location
src/db.ts:12
──────────────
💡 What went wrong
The target service actively refused the connection attempt.
👉 Why
Nothing is accepting connections on port 5432 right now.
──────────────
🛠 Fix
1. Start the service listening on port 5432.
2. Confirm the connection string matches the service that should be running.
──────────────
🧭 Signature
connection-refused (97% confidence)
──────────────
🌐 Runtime
Node.js
──────────────
🔎 Raw Error
connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:5432
Activate with eb run -v <command> or set CLIX_VERBOSE=1.
For errors that don't match any known signature (Django OperationalError, Express middleware failures, custom exceptions, etc.), errbuddy shows a minimal panel instead of letting raw lines scroll by:
⚠️ Internal Server Error: /api/users/
OperationalError: no such table: users
ℹ️ Unrecognised error — showing raw output
No invented 💡 Why or 🛠 Fix — those only appear when errbuddy actually understands the error.
The server keeps running. Exit codes are not affected for non-fatal errors.
If the same unknown error repeats within 10 seconds, dedup kicks in:
⚠️ Same error repeated ×3 — suppressing duplicates
- Hybrid detection — a broad heuristic net now catches unknown errors (e.g.
Internal Server Error,OperationalError) and renders a minimal panel instead of raw output - Adaptive flush — heuristic error blocks flush after a single line + blank, so short 2-line framework errors are caught immediately
- Dedup for unknown errors — same heuristic panel suppressed and counted within a 10-second window
- Windows fix —
spawnnow usesshell: trueon Windows sonpm,yarn, andpnpmresolve correctly (ENOENTon.cmdscripts is gone) -vflag fix — verbose flag is now scoped to therunsubcommand; previously-vwas passed as the command to spawn, causingENOENT- Server log streaming — passthrough stderr lines (Django, Next.js, Rails access logs) are no longer gated on stdout activity; they stream immediately
Open an issue with the raw stderr text whenever errbuddy misses or misclassifies something. The tool is still early, and every good report turns into a better signature in the next release.
MIT © errbuddy contributors