The Flame of the West · Reforged in Rust
A System Monitor Reforged
Named after the blade shattered at the dawn of the Third Age
and reforged for a king — narsil is sharper
than the tools that came before it.
What Narsil Sees
Every metric your system holds, rendered in Braille and flame — without ever leaving the terminal. Runs on Linux, Windows and macOS. GPU monitoring is Linux-only for now.
Every percentage label inside a gauge automatically inverts its colour character-by-character at the fill boundary — so text is always readable, even when the bar sits at exactly 50%. No other terminal monitor does this.
unique to narsilCPU & RAM gauges, live RX/TX sparklines, and a process list that fills every available line of your terminal.
Global usage history rendered in Braille dot art, followed by per-core gauges colour-coded by load intensity.
Braille chartsRAM and Swap history charts with live GiB usage gauges. See exactly how much of your kingdom's silver remains.
Combined RX/TX history chart alongside live per-direction throughput — every packet a message from the realm.
Per-partition usage bars at fixed height, with ▲ ▼ scroll indicators when your vaults exceed the visible height.
scrollableProcess table sorted by CPU usage — the lords of the realm and their burdens, always filling the visible height.
Per-GPU cards with utilisation and VRAM history charts, live gauges, temperature, and power draw. AMD and NVIDIA fully supported. GPU monitoring requires Linux with the amdgpu or NVIDIA proprietary driver.
A 1-second tick loop drives all rendering. Key events are processed between ticks with zero busy-waiting — swift and silent as a ranger.
Forge Your Blade
Requires Rust ≥ 1.85. Runs on Linux, Windows 10+, and macOS 12+. GPU support requires Linux with standard /sys mounts.
The quickest path. Cargo fetches, compiles with full optimisations, and installs the binary.
~/.cargo/bin/. Make sure that directory is on your $PATH.
Clone and build locally — ideal for development or inspecting the forge.
Enable NVIDIA GPU monitoring via NVML. Requires proprietary NVIDIA drivers installed at link time.
nvidia feature links against libnvidia-ml.so. If the NVML library is absent at link time, the build fails — this is by design.
The Stewards of Silicon
GPU monitoring is Linux-only — narsil reads deep into the kernel’s sysfs and NVML to bring you real GPU metrics. On Windows and macOS the GPU tab is not compiled in; all other tabs work normally.
AMD APU VRAM values reflect GTT — system RAM dynamically shared with the GPU. The numbers are accurate; dedicated-vs-shared label disambiguation is planned.
Command the Blade
Measured Against Heroes of Old
The blades that came before, and what sets narsil apart.
| Feature | top |
htop |
gotop |
⚔️ narsil |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Language | C | C | Go | 🦀 Rust |
| GPU metrics | ✗ | ✗ | partial | AMD + NVIDIA (Linux) |
| Braille charts | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Per-char label inversion | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Disk usage bars | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scroll indicators | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Keybinding status bar | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Log tail panel | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | planned |
| Alert rules | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | planned |
| Remote / SSH mode | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | planned |
What the Palantír Foretells
--interval <ms>--json / --prometheus export for Grafana