Introducing `vector top`

{{< grpc-migration-warning >}}

vector top is a command for the Vector CLI that displays both metrics emitted by your Vector instance as well as information about your Vector topology through a beautiful dashboard-style interface reminiscent of tools like htop. To use it, run vector top and specify the URL of the running Vector instance you want to monitor:

vector top --url https://my-vector-instance.prod.acmecorp.biz

That pulls up an interface that looks like this:

By default, the vector top looks for a Vector instance running locally at http://localhost:8686, but you can also monitor remote instances, as in the example above. The information displayed updates every second by default, but you can adjust that using the --interval flag.

Architecturally, vector top interacts directly with Vector's GraphQL API, which was built with vector top as a primary consumer. The dashboard UI was created using the excellent [tui-rs] library.