Seashells

Seashells lets you pipe output from command-line programs to the web in real-time, even without installing any new software on your machine. You can use it to monitor long-running processes like experiments that print progress to the console. You can also use Seashells to share output with friends!

$ echo 'Hello, Seashells!' | nc seashells.io 1337
serving at https://seashells.io/v/{random url}

Client

While you can use netcat for convenience (because it comes preinstalled on most systems), if you use Seashells often, it's highly recommended that you install the seashells client. You can install it by running pip install seashells.

Once you have the client installed, you can pipe output to seashells instead of piping to nc seashells.io 1337. The client gives you additional features, such as showing output on stdout as well as forwarding to Seashells. Run seashells --help for more information about using the client.

Examples

• Show output on both stdout and Seashells:

  $ python train.py | seashells
  serving at https://seashells.io/v/{url}
  Epoch 1/1000, loss = 12.483
  {...}
  

• Show output on both stdout and Seashells using netcat:

  $ go test -v | tee >(nc seashells.io 1337)
  serving at https://seashells.io/v/{url}
  === RUN   TestSeashellsBasic
  {...}
  

• Show stdout and stderr on Seashells:

  $ npm install 2>&1 | seashells
  serving at https://seashells.io/v/{url}
  npm WARN prefer global node-gyp@3.6.2 should be installed with -g
  {...}
  

• Have time to see URL before full-screen command:

  $ htop | seashells --delay 5
  serving at https://seashells.io/v/{url}
  {5 second delay}
  {...}
  

Notes

• If you want plaintext output, replace the /v/{url} (for view) with /p/{url} (for plaintext).
• Seashells isn't meant for data storage: old sessions are garbage collected after a period of one day.
• Seashells currently doesn't have an accounts system, so each IP address is limited to 5 concurrent sessions. This will likely change soon, and you'll have access to more sessions if you're signed in and using the seashells client.
• Seashells is currently in beta. While we think the service is working pretty well, we recommend that you don't use Seashells for any uptime-critical applications.
• If you have any feedback or feature requests, please send them to aathalye+seashells@mit.edu.

Acknowledgements

Created by @anishathalye.

Seashells builds on open-source technologies. In particular, Seashells would not have been possible without the excellent xterm.js.