hty logs

Stream the event log for a session. Works on running and exited sessions.

Reference

hty logs [SESSION] [--follow|-f] [--since DURATION] [--json]

Print the JSONL event log for a session. Logs are read directly from
disk, so this works for sessions that have already exited and even
across server restarts.

SESSION may be a --name, a full UUID, or any unambiguous prefix. If
omitted and exactly one log file exists, that one is used.

Flags:
  --follow, -f     Tail the log as new events arrive.
  --since DURATION Only show events within the last DURATION of logged
                   activity. Accepts: 500ms, 5s, 1m, 2h, or a bare
                   integer (seconds).
  --json           Emit raw JSONL lines (one per event) instead of the
                   human-readable table.

Logs live at \$XDG_STATE_HOME/hty/logs (fallback ~/.local/state/hty/logs).

Default output

By default, hty logs prints a human-readable table:

TIMESTAMP            KIND    DETAIL
2026-01-15 10:30:00  spawn   vim /tmp/notes.txt
2026-01-15 10:30:01  output  (42 bytes)
2026-01-15 10:30:02  input   (5 bytes)
2026-01-15 10:30:05  exited  code=0

JSON output

With --json, each line is a self-contained JSON object:

{"t":1715000000000,"kind":"spawn","program":"vim","args":["/tmp/foo.txt"],"name":"demo","rows":24,"cols":80}
{"t":1715000000100,"kind":"output","bytes_hex":"1b5b..."}
{"t":1715000000300,"kind":"input","bytes_hex":"3a77710a"}
{"t":1715000000400,"kind":"exited","code":0}

Event kinds

Examples

# Follow a running session's log in real time
hty logs my-session --follow
 
# Show events from the last 30 seconds as JSON
hty logs my-session --since 30s --json
 
# Extract just the exit code with jq
hty logs my-session --json | jq 'select(.kind == "exited") | .code'