Features

Sentinel is a focused utility application. Its core functionality can be grouped into four areas.

1. Script Management

• Add, edit, and delete scripts — a name, the shell command (I recommend using a shell script file - e.g. ./serve.sh), and a working directory.
• Organise scripts into folders, with add/rename/delete and drill-in navigation from the menu bar.
• Start, stop, and restart from the menu bar, with a status dot per row.
  • At the folder level, you will see an activity bar that gives you a view of what proportion of scripts in that folder are running.
• Search flattens folder grouping while you’re typing so you can search across all folders.
• Runs each script through an interactive login shell, so anything sourced in your .zshrc — nvm, rbenv, etc. should just work.
• Stop and restart clean up forked child processes, not just the top-level process.

Adding, editing, and deleting a script

To edit, click the row’s Edit action and change any of the same fields; Sentinel keeps the script’s running/stopped state across the edit. To delete, use the row’s Delete action — this stops the script first if it’s running.

Adding, renaming, and deleting a folder

Folders are a flat, single-level grouping — a script belongs to at most one folder, which becomes the Folder half of its Folder/Name identifier.

• Add a folder from the folder management screen, or by picking “new folder” while assigning a script to one.
• Rename a folder from the same screen; every script inside it picks up the new Folder/Name identifier automatically.
• Delete a folder to ungroup its scripts back to the top level — it does not delete the scripts themselves.

Drill into a folder from the menu bar to see just its scripts; start typing to search and the folder grouping flattens so results span every folder at once.

2. Reliability

• Auto-restart on crash, on by default, but can be disabled on a per-script basis.
• A rolling-window guard stops crash-loops and avoids infinite restart loops.
• A notification is triggered when auto-restart trips, or when a script crashes with auto-restart off.

3. Logging

• A live-tailing log window per script, combined stdout and stderr, in its own window.
• Copy, save to file, clear, or start/stop straight from the log window.

4. Configuration

Configuration options can be accessed in Sentinel’s settings dialog.

Launch at login

Settings → General → Launch at login. Sentinel opens as a menu bar app on login, with every script stopped — script status isn’t remembered across a restart of Sentinel or a reboot of the Mac, so nothing auto-starts on its own; start what you need from the menu bar.

Sentinel is intended for managing that middle ground between running something in your terminal and moving on, and having a service handled via a scheduler. If you need the latter, something to run persistently, take a look at utilising launchd.

Export and import

Settings → Data covers backup and transfer, all as JSON:

• Export all — every script and folder, for a full backup or moving to another Mac.
• Export a folder — just that folder’s scripts, for sharing a project’s setup with a teammate without handing over your whole library.
• Export a script — a single script definition, for sending one command to someone else.

Import reads the same JSON back in. Importing a folder or full-library export recreates any folders that don’t already exist by name; importing a single script drops it in at the top level (or into its folder, if that folder already exists).

Delete all scripts and folders

Settings → Data → Delete all clears every script and folder in one step — stopping anything currently running first. There’s no per-item confirmation after that, so treat it as a hard reset, not a bulk-delete shortcut for a handful of items.

Paired with export/import, it’s a clean way to reset a library that’s grown messy: export everything first as a safety copy, delete all, then re-import only the folders you actually want kept.

Footer options

Settings → Footer controls the status strip shown at the bottom of the menu bar dropdown. It can show whole-Mac CPU and memory utilisation — not just Sentinel’s own — so you get a system-level read at a glance without opening Activity Monitor. Each stat can be toggled independently; turn both off to keep the footer minimal.

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If you have a need to do more with Sentinel from outside the user interface, see the section on Automation.