Gonzo
Gonzo! The Go based TUI log analysis tool
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What is Gonzo?
Gonzo is a powerful, real-time log analysis terminal UI (TUI) inspired by k9s and Dstl8 that brings log analysis into the terminal instead of slow dashboard workflows. It analyzes log streams with beautiful charts, AI-powered insights, and advanced filtering - all from your terminal. The tool is open source under an MIT License and is terminal-native with OTLP ready support, built specifically for AI coders.
Gonzo streams logs from multiple sources including Vercel, Supabase, Railway, Render, Kubernetes, OTLP, CloudWatch, Loki, Victoria Logs, AWS CloudWatch, GCP Cloud Logs, Netlify, Fly.io, Cloudflare, and local files. It quickly moves users from raw output to usable signal with top words, severity counts, heat maps, and regex filtering. The interactive dashboard features a k9s-inspired 2×2 grid interface with real-time charts, vim-style navigation, and expandable modal views for deep log analysis.
The tool is built for developers, vibe coders, AI-native engineering teams, Vercel/Supabase/Railway/terminal-first teams, platform/SRE/DevOps engineers, backend engineers, and OpenTelemetry users who need answers while systems are running. It supports AI-powered insights with intelligent pattern detection, anomaly analysis, and root cause suggestions using OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Ollama, LM Studio, and more.
Gonzo features 11+ customizable beautiful themes including Dracula, Nord, and GitHub Light, with the ability to create custom skins using YAML. It offers advanced filtering with regex support, attribute search, severity filtering, and interactive keyboard/mouse navigation for drilling down faster and surfacing what matters.
Gonzo pricing
Pricing model: Freemium
Gonzo is completely free and open source under the MIT License. There is no paid tier - the tool is available at no cost with full features including real-time analysis, AI-powered insights, all integrations, and customizable themes. Installation options include Homebrew (brew install gonzo), Go (go install github.com/control-theory/gonzo/cmd/gonzo@latest), downloadable binaries for all platforms, or building from source.
Gonzo pros
- Open source with MIT License - completely free to use
- Terminal-native TUI keeps developers in their flow state
- Real-time log analysis with live streaming support
- OTLP-native support for OpenTelemetry logs
- Beautiful real-time charts and heat maps
- AI-powered insights with pattern detection and anomaly analysis
- Works with 18+ integrations including Vercel, Supabase, Railway, Kubernetes
- 11+ customizable themes including Dracula, Nord, GitHub Light
- Vim-style keyboard navigation for staying in-flow
- Automatic log format detection for JSON, logfmt, text
- Advanced regex filtering and attribute search
- Color-coded severity tracking
- k9s-inspired 2×2 grid dashboard interface
- Supports multiple AI providers: OpenAI, Claude, Ollama, LM Studio
- Lightweight alternative to heavy dashboard observability tools
- Interactive keyboard and mouse navigation
- Expandable modal views for deep log analysis
- Victoria Logs native support
- Easy installation via Homebrew, Go, or binary download
Gonzo cons
- Not designed for long-term log retention or storage
- Not a full log management and analysis solution
- Requires Go 1.21+ if installing via Go
- Terminal-only interface - no web dashboard
- AI analysis requires setting API keys manually
- Best for real-time investigation not historical analysis
- Learning curve for vim-style navigation shortcuts
- Limited to terminal environments - no GUI version
Frequently asked questions about Gonzo
What is Gonzo?
Gonzo is an open-source log analysis tool and terminal UI built for real-time log analysis. It helps engineers investigate live log streams, spot patterns, filter noise, and make sense of runtime failures across modern stacks like Vercel, Supabase, Railway, OpenTelemetry, and local application logs.
How is Gonzo different from other log analysis tools?
Many log analysis tools focus on storage, dashboards, and historical search. Gonzo focuses on live workflows. It is a lightweight log analysis program for engineers who want fast terminal-based investigation, pattern discovery, and filtering across multiple log sources.
Does Gonzo support OpenTelemetry/OTLP?
Yes. Gonzo can receive OTLP logs directly, which makes it useful for structured log data analysis in OpenTelemetry-based environments. Teams can inspect live attributes and patterns in the terminal instead of flattening everything into raw text first using the --otlp-enabled flag.
Is Gonzo a log management solution?
No. Gonzo is built for live log analysis and active investigation, not long-term retention or full log management and analysis. It is best used as a fast layer on top of the systems you already rely on for storage, collection, or retention.
What log sources does Gonzo support?
Gonzo is strongest for real-time log analysis, error log analysis, server log analysis, event log analysis, and structured log data analysis from modern systems. It supports Kubernetes logs, OTLP logs, CloudWatch, Loki, Vercel, Supabase, Railway, Render, Netlify, Fly.io, Cloudflare, AWS, GCP, Victoria Logs, and local JSON streams.
How does AI-powered analysis work in Gonzo?
Optionally. Gonzo supports AI log analysis by letting you send a selected log entry to Anthropic, OpenAI, Ollama, LM Studio, or a compatible API for explanation. It does not claim autonomous diagnosis across your full stack; it helps you understand a specific log line faster.
How do I install Gonzo?
Gonzo can be installed via Homebrew (brew install gonzo) on macOS and Linux, via Go (go install github.com/control-theory/gonzo/cmd/gonzo@latest) requiring Go 1.21+, by downloading the latest binary release for your platform, or by building from source (git clone https://github.com/control-theory/gonzo.git && cd gonzo && make build).
Who is Gonzo built for?
Gonzo is built for developers who want to stay in their IDE flow, vibe coders needing a sanity check for AI-generated logic, AI-native engineering teams spotting runtime patterns, Vercel/Supabase/Railway/terminal-first teams, platform/SRE/DevOps engineers for infrastructure debugging, backend engineers tracing production issues, and OpenTelemetry users inspecting structured log data quickly.
Can I customize Gonzo's appearance?
Yes. Gonzo offers 11+ beautiful themes including Dracula, Nord, and GitHub Light. Users can create custom skins with YAML or use ControlTheory's original themes to match their preferred terminal aesthetic.
Does Gonzo work with Kubernetes?
Yes. Use Gonzo with kubectl, K9s, Stern, or cluster-native workflows to understand live pod and namespace activity faster. K9s users can add Gonzo as a plugin and launch terminal log analysis on any pod with Ctrl-L keyboard shortcut. Stern pipelines work with JSON output for multi-pod analysis.