Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:5432
    at TCPConnectWrap.afterConnect [as oncomplete] (node:net:494:16) {
  errno: -61,
  code: 'ECONNREFUSED',
  syscall: 'connect',
  address: '127.0.0.1',
  port: 5432
}
    at Object.<anonymous> (/Users/dev/project/src/db.ts:12:3)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1364:14)
    at Object..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1422:10)
    at Module.load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1203:32)
    at Function._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1019:12)

❌ Connection Refused

📍 src/db.ts:12

💡 Nothing is accepting connections on port 5432 right now.

🛠 Fix: Start the service listening on port 5432.
   Confirm the connection string matches the running service.

ℹ️  Run with eb --verbose for full details

Installation

npm install -g errbuddy

Option A — Automatic (recommended)

eb init

Installs a shell hook — every command you run gets errbuddy interception automatically. No prefix needed ever again.

Option B — Explicit

eb run <your command>

No setup required. Prefix any command to run it through errbuddy.

Usage

# after eb init — no changes to how you work
npm run dev
python manage.py runserver
go run .
cargo run

# explicit mode — works anywhere, no setup
eb run npm run dev
eb run python manage.py runserver
eb run go run .
eb run cargo run

# full diagnostic output
eb run -v npm run dev

What errbuddy understands

| Runtime | What it catches | |---|---| | Node.js / TypeScript | TypeError, ECONNREFUSED, module not found, unhandled rejections, heap OOM | | Python | Tracebacks, ModuleNotFoundError, import errors | | Go | Runtime panics, goroutine dumps, build errors | | Rust | Compiler errors (E-codes), thread panics | | Java / JVM | Uncaught exceptions, stack traces | | Docker | Daemon errors, missing images | | Prisma | P-codes, init failures, constraint violations | | Next.js | Compilation failures, unresolved modules | | Rails | ActiveRecord errors, routing errors | | PostgreSQL | Auth failures, role errors, connection refused | | Generic | HTTP 4xx/5xx, disk full (ENOSPC), port conflicts |

How it works

errbuddy spawns your command as a child process and pipes stdout through untouched in real time. It watches stderr with a two-tier hybrid detector:

| Tier | Regex | Output | |---|---|---| | Known | Anchored patterns for 11 runtimes | Full panel — title, why, fix suggestions | | Heuristic | Broad keyword net (error, failed, exception, internal server error, …) | Minimal panel — reformatted, no fake explanation | | Passthrough | Everything else | Written to stderr as-is, untouched |

When a known error is detected, it runs the raw text through a classify → explain → suggest pipeline and replaces the noise with a clean panel. When an unknown error is detected, it shows a minimal panel with no invented explanation. Unrecognised output passes through untouched — errbuddy stays silent unless it has something useful to say.

Duplicate errors within a 10-second window are suppressed and counted, so long-running servers don't flood the terminal with the same panel.

Verbose mode

Verbose mode keeps the same panel, then adds the signature, confidence, runtime, and raw error details underneath.

══════════════════════
❌ Connection Refused
══════════════════════

📍 Location
src/db.ts:12

──────────────
💡 What went wrong
The target service actively refused the connection attempt.

👉 Why
Nothing is accepting connections on port 5432 right now.

──────────────
🛠 Fix
1. Start the service listening on port 5432.
2. Confirm the connection string matches the service that should be running.

──────────────
🧭 Signature
connection-refused (97% confidence)

──────────────
🌐 Runtime
Node.js

──────────────
🔎 Raw Error
connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:5432

Activate with eb run -v <command> or set CLIX_VERBOSE=1.

Unknown error detection

For errors that don't match any known signature (Django OperationalError, Express middleware failures, custom exceptions, etc.), errbuddy shows a minimal panel instead of letting raw lines scroll by:

⚠️  Internal Server Error: /api/users/
OperationalError: no such table: users
ℹ️  Unrecognised error — showing raw output

No invented 💡 Why or 🛠 Fix — those only appear when errbuddy actually understands the error. The server keeps running. Exit codes are not affected for non-fatal errors.

If the same unknown error repeats within 10 seconds, dedup kicks in:

⚠️  Same error repeated ×3 — suppressing duplicates

Changelog

v1.1.0

• Hybrid detection — a broad heuristic net now catches unknown errors (e.g. Internal Server Error, OperationalError) and renders a minimal panel instead of raw output
• Adaptive flush — heuristic error blocks flush after a single line + blank, so short 2-line framework errors are caught immediately
• Dedup for unknown errors — same heuristic panel suppressed and counted within a 10-second window

v1.0.1

• Windows fix — spawn now uses shell: true on Windows so npm, yarn, and pnpm resolve correctly (ENOENT on .cmd scripts is gone)
• -v flag fix — verbose flag is now scoped to the run subcommand; previously -v was passed as the command to spawn, causing ENOENT
• Server log streaming — passthrough stderr lines (Django, Next.js, Rails access logs) are no longer gated on stdout activity; they stream immediately

Contributing

Open an issue with the raw stderr text whenever errbuddy misses or misclassifies something. The tool is still early, and every good report turns into a better signature in the next release.

License

MIT © errbuddy contributors