📦 aks-watcher

A lightweight, ESM-based file watcher built on Chokidar that automatically detects file changes and can run any command when a change occurs.

Perfect for simple dev workflows, script automation, or lightweight alternatives to tools like Nodemon.

🚀 Features

• ⚡ Real-time file watching

• 📁 Watches entire project (excluding node_modules & .git)

• ✏️ Detects add / change / delete

• 🔥 Run any command on change

• 🪟 Fully works on Windows (uses polling automatically)

• 📦 ESM native

• 🧹 Queues commands (no overlapping executions)

📥 Installation

Global install (recommended)

Bash

npm install -g aks-watcher 

Local install

Bash

npm install aks-watcher 

🧪 Usage

Basic: Watch files

Bash

aks-watcher 

Run a command on every change

Bash

aks-watcher "npm run build" 

Example: Restart a node server

Bash

aks-watcher "node server.js" 

Example: Multiple commands

Bash

aks-watcher "npm run lint && npm run build" 

📌 How it Works

aks-watcher listens to file events:

• ➕ add

• ✏️ change

• ❌ delete

• 📂 folder changes

And when a change occurs, your command is executed.

Commands are queued, meaning if you edit files too fast, it will wait for the current command to finish before running again.

⚙️ Internals / Behavior

• Uses Chokidar v4 (ESM)

• Automatically enables usePolling: true for Windows compatibility

• Ignores:

  • node_modules

  • .git

🗂 Directory Structure

Plaintext

aks-watcher/
│── bin/
│    └── index.js       # CLI entry
│── src/
│    └── watcher.js         # Main watcher logic
└── package.json 

🧩 Example Output

Plaintext

🟢 AKS Watcher started...
📁 Watching: C:\project
✨ Watching for changes...
✏️ File changed: src/index.js
🚀 Executing: npm run build...
✔ Command finished. 

🔧 CLI Arguments

| Argument | Description | | --- | --- | | "command" | The command to run on each file change |

Example:

Bash

aks-watcher "echo File updated!" 

🛠 Roadmap

• Add ignore patterns --ignore logs,dist

• Watch specific folders --dir src

• Filter by extension --ext js,ts,json

• Colored logs

• Restart long-running processes

🧑‍💻 Author

Abhishek Singh

• NPM: (aks-watcher)

• GitHub: (Repo link)

📄 License

MIT License