Lnav MVP: A Lightweight, Fast Log Navigator for the Terminal
The logs told a story, but no one could read it fast enough. Servers moved, users clicked, errors flickered past. You needed answers, not files. That’s where Lnav MVP changes the game.
Lnav MVP is the lean, fast core of the Log Navigator toolchain. It runs in your terminal. No setup drag. No giant binaries. You point it at your logs — plain text, JSON, syslog, or mixed streams — and start searching, filtering, and structuring them in real time. It parses formats on the fly. Syntax highlighting makes patterns jump out. SQL queries turn messy log lines into tables you can slice without leaving the CLI.
The “MVP” here stands for minimum viable product, but it’s more than a prototype. Lnav MVP keeps the essentials of the full Lnav while stripping out non-critical extras, giving you speed and clarity when you need it most. It focuses on high-performance log parsing, compressed stream reading, and instant pattern matching. You can run it over SSH on remote machines or plug it into container workflows without a GUI or complex orchestration.
Why use Lnav MVP over full Lnav? If your environment is resource-tight, if you want something you can drop into a CI/CD job, or if you need ultra-quick troubleshooting in production, the MVP is lighter and faster. It retains the ability to merge multiple log sources in time order, handle multiline stack traces, and integrate with scripting for automation. It’s engineered for tight loops: inspect, act, repeat.
To get started, download the Lnav MVP build from the main Lnav repository or package manager. Point it to your logs:
lnav yourlogfile.log
From there, use / to search, :filter-in or :filter-out to focus, and SQL mode (;) to query structured data. If you already know Lnav, the MVP will work the same — only with a smaller footprint and faster load.
Lnav MVP thrives where log volume is high and time is short. It meets the demands of fast feedback and quick iteration without bloat.
See how this fits into a complete workflow at hoop.dev — and run it live in minutes.