busyboy

Console application to display various information on BUSYBar.

Installation

uv tool install busyboy

Configuration

Both variables are required:

--host and --token override them for a single invocation.

Usage

export BUSYBOY_HOST=10.0.4.20
export BUSYBOY_TOKEN=your-token

# Show a message on the front display
busyboy text "BUILD OK"

# In colour, disappearing after 30 seconds
busyboy text "deploy failed" --color red --timeout 30

# Take it down again
busyboy clear

# Watch a GitHub Actions workflow on the front display until Ctrl+C
busyboy gh workflow ci.yml

Text stays on the display until it is replaced, cleared, or its --timeout expires. Anything too wide for the 72x16 front display scrolls; pass --scroll-rate 0 to switch that off.

Successful commands print nothing and exit 0. Failures print one line to stderr and exit 1. Use --verbose to see the underlying requests.

Watching a GitHub Actions workflow

busyboy gh workflow ci.yml
busyboy gh workflow "Deploy" --repo octocat/hello-world --branch main --interval 30

WORKFLOW is a workflow id, filename, or display name. By default the command watches the current git checkout's branch in origin's repository, polling every 10 seconds; override either with --repo owner/name, --branch, or --interval (seconds). It keeps the repository on the top row, the open pull request number (or the branch name, if there isn't one) on the bottom row, and a status icon on the left, redrawing whenever the workflow's status changes — and it runs until interrupted with Ctrl+C, at which point it clears the display before exiting.

This needs a GitHub token, sourced separately from BUSYBOY_TOKEN: it reads gh auth token if the gh CLI is installed and logged in, falling back to the GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable.