Show HN: Weatherdeck – a read-only status board for AI coding agent lanes

Weatherdeck is a status board for machines and the work running on them (a TV or phone page fed by small pushers), not a weather app and not a monitoring or alerting system.

What you see. Every picture here is the demo (weatherdeck run --demo, with #theme=ship-deck on the page address). Its sources are invented and nothing in it is real.

In the clip, Cinder (one of the invented sources) stops reporting. Still frame.

The phone page from a few minutes into the demo, cropped after the ALL FINE tile: the calls, then the problems, then that tile, which is lit only when no call or problem is open and every feed reports.

It is an at-a-glance board for work reported by many sources, meant to be left on a TV or a phone: what is waiting on you, what is moving and how far along it honestly is, what got done, what is next, and whether you can trust what you are looking at.

What this is not. It is not a monitoring or alerting system: it never pages anyone, and it shows only what sources push to it. It is not a hosted service: you run it yourself, on machines you choose. And it is pre-1.0 hobby software, open-sourced because it solved a problem the author had: details may change, and support is best effort.

You need Python 3.9 to 3.14 (an older one stops at startup with a one-line message; the Microsoft Store one is fine for trying it; to run it at logon or run the beat, see docs/runbook-windows.md). Nothing to install: run it from a source checkout or the release zip. Get the code by cloning this repository (git clone it, then cd into the folder), or by unzipping the zip that scripts/build-package builds from a clone. pip install is not supported yet and stops with a message saying so. Below, weatherdeck means python3 bin/weatherdeck on macOS/Linux and bin\weatherdeck.cmd on Windows (cmd or PowerShell).

weatherdeck run --demo

Open http://127.0.0.1:8787/. Three invented sources report; one stops reporting after about two and a half minutes, shows late from about 2:40 and silent about three minutes after start, so you can see the offline state. Ctrl-C stops it. (--port N to change the port.)

weatherdeck on # background; prints the URLs weatherdeck status weatherdeck off

The data lives in your per-user data directory (--data DIR or $WEATHERDECK_DATA to choose another). On Windows, weatherdeck startup install also starts it at every logon, with no admin rights.

Send it something. Any tool, one POST (from the same machine, no setup needed):

curl -X POST http://127.0.0.1:8787/api/ingest -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{ "schema": "lookout.feed", "schema_version": "1.0", "source": { "id": "my-laptop" }, "items": [{ "id": "build", "title": "Nightly build", "state": "running" }] }'

The schema id reads lookout.feed on purpose: it is the wire name every adapter already speaks, kept unchanged when the product was renamed (see docs/feed-spec.md, "Schema ids").

To feed it continuously, run the example adapter, which turns a hand-edited list plus this machine's vitals into a feed and pushes it to every host in a list:

cp examples/adapter/work.example.json work.json cp examples/adapter/sinks.example.txt sinks.txt # edit the hosts python3 examples/adapter/push_example.py --work work.json --sinks sinks.txt

To feed it from your own tool, see docs/adapters.md, "Write a pusher for your tool".

Let other devices see it. Add addresses to hosts.bind in your config file (a LAN address, a VPN range, or both), create a token per source (weatherdeck token new my-laptop), and open the page from your phone. Once any token exists, pushes need Authorization: Bearer <token>. For a TV, open the page full-screen on any machine that can reach the host, or in kiosk mode on the host itself.

The config file is <data>/config.json, in the data directory from step 2 (weatherdeck status prints that directory; --config FILE or $WEATHERDECK_CONFIG names another file). It does not exist until you create it. A minimal one:

{ "hosts": { "bind": ["localhost", "auto:192.168.1.0/24"] } }

Restart the host after editing it (weatherdeck restart). Every key is in docs/hosting.md.

Remove it. Stop the host with weatherdeck off, then delete the folder you unpacked or cloned and the data directory (where weatherdeck status says it is). On Windows, run weatherdeck startup remove first if you ran startup install. Nothing else is installed: no service, no registry entry, no files elsewhere.

Windows 11 macOS (Apple Silicon) Linux (Ubuntu, WSL2)

Host (weatherdeck run, on, ingest) supported supported supported

Python 3.9 to 3.14 (3.8 is not supported) 3.9 to 3.14 (3.8 is not supported) 3.9 to 3.14 (3.8 is not supported)

Test suite on GitHub's hosted runners (2026-10-16; 453 tests, .github/workflows/test.yml, run by hand) passes on Python 3.9 to 3.14. The first run the same morning failed 13 tests on every Windows leg (nine started Node with a command line Windows refuses as too long; the rest were tests assuming a Linux machine, a code-page decode, and a scratch clone Windows would not delete); they were fixed and the second run passed all 18 jobs passes on Python 3.9 to 3.14 passes on Python 3.9 to 3.14

Page: Chrome, Edge supported supported supported

Page: Safari (macOS), iPhone headless WebKit (layout, overflow, console errors); the dashboard depth scene was checked and signed off on Safari, iPhone and a 4K TV on 2026-10-10 by the maintainer, and nothing else on those devices has been (docs/device-checklist.md) same same

Page: Firefox expected to work, not checked each release

Since you last looked (browser storage) per browser; a browser that blocks site data shows no since plate same same

Feed schema read 1.0 to 1.11 1.0 to 1.11 1.0 to 1.11

One ship per machine (0.4.0) TV: up to six ships, then a convoy; phone: the convoy strip scrolls inside itself same same

The open sea (0.4.1) TV (ship deck): with nothing waiting, one banner line and the sea across the whole upper area; checked at 1920 x 1080 and 3840 x 2160 same same

Versions per machine (0.5.0) reporter rows, the watch strip, the trust line and the phone's SOFTWARE section say each source's adapter, or "version unknown"; only a gap that changes meaning is flagged same same

Last seen and the replay key (0.4.1) per browser tab (session storage); a tab that blocks it starts with "not yet on this screen" same same

Slowed on purpose (0.7.0) words only (trust line, Crow's nest); nothing to check beyond reading them same same

The hosted runs are the first runs of the test suite on macOS and Windows images; before them it had been run on Linux and WSL2 and on one Windows 11 PC and one Mac by the maintainer. The hosted Windows image is Windows Server, not Windows 11, and the suite runs the page-script tests with Node; the maintainer's own Windows 11 PC runs the host day to day, which the hosted run does not cover.

What each release was actually run on is in CHANGELOG.md, with the checks only a person can make (a real Safari, iPhone and TV; only the dashboard depth scene has been signed off so far, see docs/device-checklist.md) listed as such. Tests: python3 -m unittest discover -s tests (see CONTRIBUTING.md).

docs/honesty.md: the honesty contract on one page: what the board never does (green when silent, zero for unknown, a made-up event), where every number, creature and light comes from in the feed, the machine-alert debounce (two feeds to raise, two to clear, one keepalive of latency), and why no value number is shown until it is measured.

docs/ledger-spec.md: the tool value ledger: one append-only file per tool, unknown written as unknown with its reason, the honest verbs (surfaced, refused, placed, landed, not dispatched), and the reading rule that turns fourteen days of lines into KEEP, QUIET, CUT-CANDIDATE or UNMEASURED. No value number is shown until it is measured.

docs/feed-spec.md: the feed schema (1.11), how sources merge, the five lane classes, machine rest and strain, lane state (one word and one sentence per lane), goals (the goal each lane serves, with a count under it), allowance chips, black holes (no agent at the work, outside waits, queues, coming up, the shipping gap, freshness, burn rate), the library (one honest age and word per mirrored folder), the view at a glance (since you last looked, grouping by project), and what silence looks like.

CHANGELOG.md: what changed in each release, and what it was checked on; docs/device-checklist.md: what only a person can check on a real Mac, iPhone and TV.

docs/ADDINS.md: the card contract: one small JSON file per tool in a drop directory, shown as a tile with a stale mark. Nothing is run or imported.

docs/adapters.md: write a pusher for your tool: what to send, the sinks file, the honesty rules for adapters, and how to test one by recording and replaying the files it reads.

docs/hosting.md: the weatherdeck command, binding and profiles, every config key, transports, pushing to several hosts.

docs/runbook-windows.md and docs/runbook-macos.md: half a page each to run a host.

docs/runbook-feed-gap.md: a silent feed versus a machine that is down: the read-only checks in order (uptime, lingering, timers, the journal or cron log, the beat's age) for Linux, macOS and Windows, what each answer means, and whether KillMode=process matters for a pusher package.

docs/beat.md: the machine beat (bin/weatherdeck-beat): memory pressure, swap rate, run queue and disk per machine, its cost, and how it reaches the board.

In the source repository: scripts/build-package builds the distributable zip (the product only; every entry carries the commit time of HEAD, or SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH when set, so the same commit built with the same Python and zlib on the same OS gives byte-identical zips and sha256sum is a real comparison there; across machines or OSes compare per-file content instead, in a scratch directory: unzip -q <zip> -d x && (cd x && find . -type f | LC_ALL=C sort | xargs shasum -a 256 | shasum -a 256), which works on Linux and macOS; file modes still differ on a Windows checkout; a build from a tree that is not a git checkout stamps 1980-01-01, so compare only builds of the same commit or of the same kind of tree), scripts/self-audit scans for secrets and names before a release, scripts/release-scan runs it and also scans the whole git history for names, e-mail addresses, home paths and tokens (see CONTRIBUTING.md). Packages that bundle an adapter for a specific tool are built from that adapter's own repository, not here.

examples/: the synthetic demo feeds, a tiny generic adapter and an example host config (examples/host/).

Try it without installing

Open the static demo: a folder of plain files that shows the board with a recorded feed of invented sources, no server and no Python needed to look at it. It is built in the source repository, not from this package (which does not carry the build scripts): there, python3 scripts/build-static-demo writes dist/static-demo/; open dist/static-demo/index.html in a browser, or put that folder on any static host. A yellow bar, DEMO: recorded synthetic feed, stays on the screen and says nothing is live. The page replays three recorded frames in order, a slow step every 25 seconds, so the calls, lanes and weather change as they did in the recording (with reduced motion it holds one frame and offers a button for the next). To record the frames again, in the source repository, python3 scripts/record-demo-feed.

On a TV, a desk screen or a laptop (any window 700 CSS px or wider) the front door is the open sea (#/sea, or no route): the fleet on the water at full screen, one ship per machine with its name plate, the headline card for the calls on the left and the log along the bottom, on a 640 x 360 art-pixel stage. Each ship plate carries a quiet badge: how many asks wait on you from that machine, and how many of its lanes are off course or alerting. A ship opens its plan, a place opens its list. The Lists door beside the ? (and in a ship's plan bar) open