copter

Lightweight local orchestration CLI for running and managing multi-service dev environments.

Features

• Define multi-service development environments with a simple copter.yml.
• Start, stop, and restart groups of processes or containers with dependency ordering.
• Built-in health checks, automatic restarts, and aggregated logs for easier debugging.
• Programmatic API and CLI for integration with scripts and CI workflows.

Install

npm install copter

Quick Start

Create a copter.yml describing the services you want to run:

services:
  web:
    cmd: "npm run dev"
    cwd: ./packages/web
    ports:
      - "3000:3000"
    health: "http://localhost:3000/health"
  api:
    cmd: "node server.js"
    cwd: ./packages/api
    ports:
      - "4000:4000"
    depends_on:
      - db
  db:
    image: "postgres:14"
    env:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: example
    ports:
      - "5432:5432"

Start the environment from the project root:

npx copter up --config copter.yml

Stream logs or stop the environment:

npx copter logs -f
npx copter down

Programmatic usage example:

const copter = require('copter');

(async () => {
  // Start services defined in ./copter.yml
  await copter.up({ config: './copter.yml' });

  // ...run tests or dev tasks...

  // Tear down when finished
  await copter.down({ config: './copter.yml' });
})();

License

MIT