Dev Launcher

A tiny local control panel for your scattered dev projects. One list, a Run/Stop button per command, live logs, and port-conflict handling for when three projects all want :5173.

Run it

npm install
npm start

Then open http://localhost:9000. (Change with PORT=9001 npm start.)

The UI (React) is bundled locally with esbuild on startup — no CDN, so it works offline. If you edit the UI source under src/, restart the server to rebuild the bundle.

Use it

• Projects & commands — a project is a folder plus the commands you run in it. Add as many commands as you like (npm run dev, dotnet run, a raw script like tsx watch server/index.ts, …); each runs on its own with its own Run/Stop, port, and live log.
• Add / Edit — set name, folder, an optional category and tags, and the command list. Remove lives inside the Edit form.
• Detect from folder — reads the folder's package.json scripts (and any .csproj) and offers them as commands. It picks the right package manager automatically — npm / pnpm / yarn / bun — from the lockfile or the packageManager field, so you get pnpm dev, bun run dev, etc.
• Scan folder — point it at C:\dev and it finds every folder with a package.json or .csproj so you can bulk-add. Add more commands afterwards with Edit.
• Run / Stop — Run spawns the command in that folder; Stop kills the whole process tree (so npm run dev doesn't leave the real dev server orphaned). Quitting the launcher stops everything it started.
• Port conflicts — if a command's port is already taken, Run won't start blindly. You get ":5173 — free it & run?" and one click frees the port and starts it. Ports are per command, so a frontend on :5173 and an API on :3000 are tracked separately.
• Logs — live output per command, with ANSI colours rendered (Vite/Next output looks right, not raw escape codes). Re-running keeps the same log view.

Organising

• Favorite ⭐ and Hide 👁 — toggle right on each card.
• Category & tags — a category pill plus #tag chips; click a tag to filter.
• Filter bar — tiny All / Fav / Hidden pills (with counts) up top, plus one pill per category. Hidden projects only show under Hidden.
• Collapse / expand — click a project header to fold its command list. The state is saved per project and survives refresh and restart.

Projects live in registry.json — plain text, edit it directly if you prefer. Older single-command registries are migrated to the new command-list shape automatically on startup.