nats-top is a command-line monitoring tool written in Go that provides real-time visibility into NATS server activity and performance. It functions as a top-like utility, displaying live metrics about server connections, message throughput, and traffic patterns in an interactive terminal interface. The tool is designed to help operators monitor and troubleshoot NATS messaging infrastructure by presenting key performance indicators in an accessible, continuously-updating dashboard format.
The tool supports multiple installation methods including direct shell installation scripts for Linux and macOS, Go's native go install command, and pre-built RPM and Deb packages distributed through GitHub releases. This multi-platform approach ensures accessibility across different deployment environments and package management systems.
nats-top offers extensive command-line configuration options for customizing monitoring behavior. Users can specify HTTP or HTTPS ports for connecting to NATS servers, limit the number of connections displayed with the -n parameter, adjust screen refresh intervals via the -d delay option, and control how many refresh cycles occur before automatic exit using the -r parameter. The tool supports certificate-based authentication through -cert, -key, and -cacert flags, with an option to skip certificate verification when needed. Output can be captured to files with customizable delimiters, and traffic can be displayed in raw bytes rather than formatted units.
The interactive interface provides dynamic sorting and filtering capabilities while the tool is running. Users can change the primary sort key on-the-fly using the o command to organize connections by various metrics including connection ID, subscription count, message counts in both directions, byte counts, idle time, and last activity timestamp. The n command allows real-time adjustment of the sample size, enabling queries like finding the connection with the largest number of subscriptions. Additional interactive commands include toggling subscription display visibility, enabling DNS address lookup for client identification, accessing help documentation, and quitting the application.
According to GitGenius activity tracking, the repository has experienced minimal recent engagement with a median issue and pull request response latency of 0.0 hours across five tracked items, though the mean latency of 16554.3 hours indicates significant gaps between some interactions. The most active contributors tracked include jackylouying with four recorded events, jm20122012 with two events, and aklesh-sakunia with one event. Defect reports represent the most common issue type with two instances, followed by one proposal. The repository shares contributors with notable projects including golang/go, cockroachdb/cockroach, and go-task/task, suggesting involvement from developers working across distributed systems and infrastructure tooling.
The tool addresses the observability and performance monitoring needs of NATS deployments by providing operators with immediate insight into server health, connection behavior, and message flow patterns. Its classification within distributed messaging, server monitoring, and real-time communication domains reflects its role in the broader NATS ecosystem for maintaining visibility into message broker operations.
