pr0be

Every probe droid has one job: find what's hiding out there. pr0be sweeps your disk for code that exists nowhere else — uncommitted changes, unpushed branches, stashes, and project folders that were never put under git at all. One command, a few seconds, and you know exactly what a dead SSD would cost you.

Install · Usage · Configuration · Run it daily · Coder's Cantina

Why

Backups cover files. They do not cover intent. The dangerous state is the one git knows about but no server does: three commits ahead on a branch you forgot, a stash from last March, a prototype folder that never got git init. Time Machine will happily restore all of it — right up until the day you're on a different machine.

pr0be answers one question, fast: which of my projects exist only here?

$ pr0be
● ~/Development/products/sabacc_ui/web
  uncommitted    75 staged, 67 modified, 1 untracked
  stashed        2 stash entry/entries
  unpushed       main is 3 commit(s) ahead
  no upstream    switch-2-b10cks has no upstream

● ~/Development/tools/phpantom_lsp
  uncommitted    2 modified

▲ 106 of 136 projects hold code that only exists here: 13 not a repo, 57 uncommitted, 64 unpushed, 17 no remote, 22 stashed, 10 behind
  (24141 directories scanned in 1047ms)

Install

cargo install --git https://github.com/coderscantina/pr0be

Or from a clone:

git clone https://github.com/coderscantina/pr0be.git
cd pr0be
cargo install --path .        # → ~/.cargo/bin/pr0be

Pre-built macOS and Linux binaries are attached to each release.

Requirements: Rust 1.74+ to build, and git on your PATH at runtime. macOS and Linux are supported; notifications use the system notifier on both.

Usage

pr0be                      # scan the configured roots (default ~/Development)
pr0be ~/Code ~/Sites       # scan these trees instead
pr0be --all                # show clean projects too
pr0be --json               # machine readable, for scripts and dashboards
pr0be --fetch              # fetch remotes first, so "behind" is accurate
pr0be --notify             # desktop notification when something is at risk
pr0be --init > ~/.config/pr0be/config.toml

Options: -c/--config FILE, --max-depth N, --no-color, -h/--help, -V/--version.

What it reports

finding	meaning
not a repo	project directory (package.json, Cargo.toml, …) without git
uncommitted	staged / modified / untracked files in the working tree
unpushed	branch is ahead of its upstream
no upstream	local branch that was never pushed
no remote	repository has no remote at all — nothing to push to
upstream gone	the upstream branch disappeared from the remote
stashed	stash entries — they live only in this working copy
detached HEAD	commits made here are easy to lose
behind	the remote has commits you don't (informational, not a risk)

Everything except behind counts as at risk, and makes pr0be exit with code 1 — so it drops straight into a cron job, a git hook, or CI.

Speed and safety

• Repositories are inspected in parallel; ~24 000 directories take about a second on an M-series Mac.
• Read-only. pr0be never commits, pushes, cleans, or writes to your repos — the only network call it can make is the opt-in --fetch.
• --fetch runs with terminal prompts disabled and a per-repo timeout (default 20s), so a repository that wants credentials is skipped instead of hanging the sweep.
• Directories inside a repository are never reported as not a repo — that repo already covers them — but repositories nested inside another repository are inspected in their own right.

Configuration

Config is looked up in ./pr0be.toml, ~/.config/pr0be/config.toml, then ~/.pr0be.toml; the first match wins. pr0be --init prints a starting point.

roots = ["~/Development"]
max_depth = 8

# Directory names never descended into.
ignore = ["node_modules", "vendor", "target", "dist", ".venv"]

# A directory holding one of these but no .git is reported as "not a repo".
# Plain names or a "*.suffix" pattern.
project_markers = ["package.json", "Cargo.toml", "composer.json", "go.mod", "*.xcodeproj"]

# Fetch remotes before checking (slow, needs network). Same as --fetch.
fetch = false
fetch_timeout = 20

# Native notification when problems are found. Same as --notify.
notify = false

Command line flags always win over the config file.

Run it daily

A launchd agent at ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.coderscantina.pr0be.plist — the notification only fires when something is actually at risk, so a quiet day stays quiet:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key><string>com.coderscantina.pr0be</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>/Users/you/.cargo/bin/pr0be</string>
    <string>--notify</string>
  </array>
  <key>StartCalendarInterval</key>
  <dict><key>Hour</key><integer>18</integer><key>Minute</key><integer>0</integer></dict>
  <key>StandardOutPath</key><string>/tmp/pr0be.log</string>
  <key>StandardErrorPath</key><string>/tmp/pr0be.log</string>
</dict>
</plist>

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.coderscantina.pr0be.plist

On Linux, the equivalent crontab line:

0 18 * * * /home/you/.cargo/bin/pr0be --notify >> /tmp/pr0be.log 2>&1

Scripting

--json emits the full result, including clean projects when combined with --all:

$ pr0be --json | jq '.entries[] | select(.issues[].kind == "unpushed") | .path'

{
  "config": "/Users/you/.config/pr0be/config.toml",
  "scanned_dirs": 24141,
  "projects": 136,
  "at_risk": 106,
  "elapsed_ms": 1047,
  "entries": [
    {
      "path": "/Users/you/Development/tools/phpantom_lsp",
      "is_repo": true,
      "issues": [{ "kind": "dirty", "staged": 0, "modified": 2, "untracked": 0 }]
    }
  ]
}

Exit codes: 0 nothing at risk · 1 at least one project holds local-only code · 2 bad configuration.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas, and pull requests are welcome — see the Contributing Guide for the commit format and PR process, and the Code of Conduct for how we treat each other.

cargo test
cargo clippy --all-targets
cargo fmt

Security

Please report vulnerabilities responsibly — see the Security Policy.

License

pr0be is licensed under the MIT License.

Also from Coder's Cantina

• b10cks CMS — the opinionated headless CMS (repo)
• RAVN — the email client (repo)
• gh0st — the SEO crawler

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Maintained by Michael Wallner at Coder's Cantina