Overseer — Real-Time Process Intelligence at Scale

Core Capabilities

Every lever your infrastructure demands.

Overseer exposes a category-defining set of process intelligence primitives. Every feature maps directly to a real-time system interaction — zero abstraction tax.

⚡

Instant Kill Protocol

Terminate any rogue process with surgical precision. Send SIGTERM, SIGKILL, or any signal by number or name. Interactive k command lets you target by PID in under a second.

-k interactive

⚖

Priority Rebalancing Engine

Dynamically adjust process nice values in production. Promote mission-critical workloads, deprioritize batch jobs — all without restart. The r interactive command puts scheduling in your hands.

-r renice

📊

Per-CPU Disaggregation

Break your CPU overview into individual core telemetry with the 1 toggle. See %Cpu0, %Cpu1, %Cpu2 independently. No more averaged-out blind spots on SMP machines.

-1 single-cpu

🌳

Forest View Mode

Visualize parent-child process hierarchies as a tree with the V toggle. Instantly understand which processes spawned which children. Collapse subtrees with v for noise-free monitoring.

V forest view

🔌

Thread-Level Granularity

Toggle between process summation and individual thread display with H. When multi-threaded apps push past 100% CPU, you need thread-level visibility. Overseer delivers.

-H threads

📈

Memory & CPU Graphs

Visual bar and block graphs for CPU states (t toggle) and memory usage (m toggle). Each is a 4-way cycle from detailed percentages through abbreviated summaries to full visual graphs.

t / m graphs

🎨

Color Theming Engine

Full color mapping with the z toggle and Z configuration screen. Assign 8 colors across 5 UI targets. Highlight sort columns with x and running tasks with y.

z / Z color

🚀

Batch Pipeline Mode

Export process snapshots to files, scripts, or downstream systems with -b. Pair with -n for iteration limits and -d for custom intervals. Purpose-built for CI/CD and automation.

-b batch

Getting Started

From zero to observability in four steps.

Deploy the Agent

Initialize Overseer on any machine. The dynamic real-time view activates immediately, presenting your summary area with load averages, CPU states, memory, and swap — all in one interface.

Configure Your Fields

Press f to open Fields Management. Choose from PID, USER, PR, NI, VIRT, RES, SHR, S, %CPU, %MEM, TIME+, COMMAND and dozens more. Reorder columns, toggle visibility, designate your sort field.

Filter & Focus

Use -u to filter by effective user, -U for any user match, or -p to monitor up to 20 specific PIDs. Apply advanced Other Filters with o/O for field-level targeting.

Act in Real-Time

Kill processes (k), renice priorities (r), change delay intervals (d), toggle cumulative time (S), and persist your entire configuration with W. Everything auto-restores on next launch.

Capability	Overseer	Competitor A	Competitor B	Competitor C
Real-time interactive kill/renice	✓	✗	✗	Partial
Per-CPU disaggregation	✓	✓	✗	✗
Forest view (process tree)	✓	✗	✓	✗
Thread-level monitoring	✓	Partial	✗	✗
Visual CPU/MEM graphs	✓	✗	✓	✗
Batch mode for CI/CD	✓	✗	✗	✓
Alternate multi-window display	✓	✗	✗	✗
Persistent configuration	✓	✓	✗	Partial
NUMA-aware topology	✓	✗	✗	✗

Live Demo

See Overseer in action.

Real output. Real-time intelligence. Exactly what your infrastructure team sees every day.

overseer — 80×24

overseer - 15:42:03 up 47 days,  3:21,  2 users,  load average: 1.24, 0.98, 0.87
Tasks: 247 total,   2 running, 244 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
%Cpu(s):  8.3 us,  2.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 88.4 id,  0.7 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.5 si,  0.0 st
MiB Mem :  15738.2 total,   2104.3 free,   8421.7 used,   5212.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap:   8192.0 total,   7934.1 free,    257.9 used.   6584.0 avail Mem

    PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S  %CPU  %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
   1842 deploy    20   0 4218732 512340  42108 R  42.3   3.2  12:34.56 node
   1023 postgres  20   0 1823456 298412  18204 S  18.7   1.9   8:12.03 postgres
    892 root      20   0  982344 124568  32412 S  11.2   0.8   4:45.21 containerd
   2341 deploy    20   0 3842108 421056  28716 S   8.9   2.7  15:23.44 java
   1567 redis     20   0  218432  98204   6124 S   4.1   0.6   2:08.77 redis-server
    456 root      20   0  724180  84312  44820 S   2.8   0.5   1:42.09 kubelet
   3012 nginx     20   0  142308  22104  10412 S   1.4   0.1   0:34.88 nginx
   1201 root      20   0  412684  68204  24108 S   0.9   0.4   3:12.56 dockerd
      1 root      20   0  168432  12284   8420 S   0.3   0.1  12:04.33 systemd
    234 root      20   0   98124   8412   6204 S   0.0   0.1   0:08.12 sshd

Pricing

Observability that scales with you.

Every plan includes real-time monitoring. Upgrade for interactive commands, advanced fields, and enterprise governance.

Starter

$0/month

Read-only visibility for solo operators.

Summary area only (load avg, CPU%, MEM%)
Default fields: PID, USER, %CPU, %MEM, COMMAND
3-second refresh interval minimum
Single machine
Monochrome display

Get Started

Trusted by infrastructure leaders.

★★★★★

"We replaced three separate monitoring tools with Overseer. The ability to kill rogue processes and renice priorities interactively — in the same interface where we see the data — is a category-defining unlock. Our MTTR dropped by 74%."

Rena Reeves

VP of Infrastructure, ScaleForge

"Forest View mode changed how we think about process hierarchies. I can collapse subtrees, focus on parent processes, and instantly understand our entire service mesh. This is the 10x tool I didn't know I needed."

Anita Kapoor

CTO, DataMesh

"Batch mode is an absolute game-changer for our CI/CD pipeline. We pipe Overseer output to our analytics stack, run exactly N iterations, and the data just flows. The -d flag for sub-second intervals is chef's kiss."

Iris Park

Staff SRE, CloudNine

"Per-CPU disaggregation on a 128-core machine. Thread-level visibility. NUMA node topology. I honestly cannot believe this didn't exist before. Overseer is mission-critical infrastructure for us."

Sven Carlsson

Platform Lead, Meridian Financial

FAQ

Questions? We ship answers.

What fields and columns are available? ▾

Overseer exposes over 60 sortable fields including PID, USER, PR, NI, VIRT, RES, SHR, S, %CPU, %MEM, TIME+, COMMAND, Docker container ID, NUMA node, control groups, namespaces, I/O metrics, and more. Use the f interactive command to customize which fields are displayed and their order.

Is my data secure? ▾

Absolutely. Overseer supports Secure Mode which restricts dangerous operations like kill, renice, and delay changes — even for root when configured via the System Restrictions File. All sessions are encrypted, access is role-gated, and we maintain SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications.

Can I monitor specific processes only? ▾

Yes. The -p option lets you specify up to 20 PIDs as a comma-delimited list or as separate arguments. Combined with Thread mode (H), you'll also see all threads in the thread group of each monitored PID. To return to full monitoring, simply use the =, u, or U interactive commands.

Does Overseer work offline? ▾

Overseer is designed for real-time, on-machine process intelligence. It requires direct access to the system's process information to deliver its full feature set. Configuration persists locally — use the W command to save your entire setup, and it restores automatically on next launch with zero network dependency.

Can I run multiple views simultaneously? ▾

Yes — Alternate Display Mode (A) lets you view up to 4 separate task windows simultaneously, each with its own field group, sort column, user filter, and color scheme. Use a/w to cycle between windows and g to designate the current window. Each window is independently configurable and scrollable.

The operating system
for operating systems.

Every lever your infrastructure demands.

Instant Kill Protocol

Priority Rebalancing Engine

Per-CPU Disaggregation

Forest View Mode

Thread-Level Granularity

Memory & CPU Graphs

Color Theming Engine

Batch Pipeline Mode

From zero to observability in four steps.

Deploy the Agent

Configure Your Fields

Filter & Focus

Act in Real-Time

We outperform every alternative.

See Overseer in action.

Platform activity, right now.

Observability that scales with you.

Trusted by infrastructure leaders.

Questions? We ship answers.

Ready to see everything?

Coming Soon

The operating systemfor operating systems.

Every lever your infrastructure demands.

Instant Kill Protocol

Priority Rebalancing Engine

Per-CPU Disaggregation

Forest View Mode

Thread-Level Granularity

Memory & CPU Graphs

Color Theming Engine

Batch Pipeline Mode

From zero to observability in four steps.

Deploy the Agent

Configure Your Fields

Filter & Focus

Act in Real-Time

We outperform every alternative.

See Overseer in action.

Platform activity, right now.

Observability that scales with you.

Trusted by infrastructure leaders.

Questions? We ship answers.

Ready to see everything?

The operating system
for operating systems.