JVM Observability Platform GitHub

Argus JVM Observability Platform

A lightweight JVM observability platform that helps you understand what your Java application is doing — right now, in production.

Java 11+ CLI Java 17+ Dashboard Java 21+ Full Features 67 Commands Zero Dependencies v1.4.0

Argus gives you two tools for JVM diagnostics:

  • Argus CLI — 67 diagnostic commands that work on any running JVM. No agent, no restart, no configuration. Point at a PID and get answers in seconds.
  • Argus Agent — Attach as a Java agent and get a live web dashboard with GC timelines, CPU graphs, heap usage, flame graphs, and thread analysis, all streaming in real time.

Philosophy: Argus is not an APM. It's a diagnostic tool designed for the moments when you need to look inside a JVM and understand what's happening — quickly, without setup overhead, without external dependencies.

Why Argus?

Every Java developer has been there. Your application is running in production, and something is wrong. Response times are climbing. Memory usage is creeping up. The GC is pausing more often than it should. You know something is happening inside the JVM, but you can't see it.

Traditional monitoring tools tell you that your app is slow, but they don't tell you why. APM solutions are expensive and heavy. JMX is clunky. JFR dumps require post-processing. By the time you've gathered the data, the incident is over.

Argus was built to solve this problem.

Instant CLI Diagnostics

67 commands that work on any running JVM. No agent, no restart, no configuration. Just point at a PID and get answers in seconds.

Real-time Dashboard

Attach as a Java agent and get a live web dashboard with GC timelines, CPU graphs, heap usage, flame graphs, and thread analysis — all streaming in real time.

Virtual Thread Aware

First-class support for Java 21 virtual threads. Detect pinning, analyze carrier thread distribution, and monitor thread lifecycle events as they happen.

Zero Overhead Design

Built on JFR and JMX MXBeans — the same low-overhead infrastructure that the JVM uses internally. No bytecode modification, no sampling bias.

Installation

One command. Takes about 10 seconds.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rlaope/argus/master/install.sh | bash

This downloads the Argus CLI to ~/.argus/ and adds it to your PATH. After installation, type argus with no arguments to see all available commands.

Continue reading

  • CLI Commands — every diagnostic command and what it answers, including the dedicated ZGC diagnosis workflow.
  • vs Traditional JVM Tools — what changes when Argus replaces a 5-tool chain in five production scenarios.
  • Real-World Scenarios — twelve production incidents (humongous allocations, TTSP, OOMKilled, deopt storms, …) walked through end-to-end.
  • Dashboard — agent setup, the JVM-health-first layout, interactive console, configuration knobs.
  • Integrations — Spring Boot starter and Micrometer metrics.
  • Reference — Java version compatibility matrix, module architecture, full configuration reference.