I built a local-first control plane for the Mac that stays on in my home lab

Tao Chen — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 09:10:38 +0000

A real control plane for the Mac you own

When an always-on Mac misbehaves, the hard part is finding the right surface: system pressure, a process, a listening port, a container, a service, or its logs.

What it can inspect

System health: CPU, memory, disk and network activity.
Processes and ports: locate a runaway process and the owner of a listening port.
Logs: read recent service output without first remembering the command.
Docker: inspect containers and their state.
Nginx and LaunchAgents: identify macOS-managed services that failed after a reboot.
SSH: open a deeper shell workflow once the dashboard has narrowed the problem.

Incident flow

Check CPU, memory, disk and network.
Find the relevant process or port.
Check Docker, Nginx, or the LaunchAgent.
Read the recent logs.
Restart only the confirmed failing service.

The macOS launcher and web dashboard are paired with Flux Remote for iOS and Android, so this first-pass diagnosis works away from the desk.

Website: https://flux.ct106.com/
Source and releases: https://github.com/chentao1006/FluxMonitor
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/app/flux-remote/id6761290185
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ct106.flux_remote

Flux Monitor is MIT licensed. Optional public tunneling is for people who understand the exposure trade-off: use strong credentials and replace the default JWT secret before exposing a Mac to the public internet.

DEV Community: Tao Chen

I built a local-first control plane for the Mac that stays on in my home lab

A real control plane for the Mac you own

What it can inspect

Incident flow