Terminal Dashboard

Munin includes a terminal-based dashboard for monitoring runs in real time. It renders braille-resolution charts, status indicators, and system resource bars directly in the terminal.

Launching

The dashboard is started with munin watch. With no arguments it auto-detects the most recently started run:

munin watch

To open a specific run, pass its ID:

munin watch 20260317T143201_abc

To pick the latest run in a given experiment:

munin watch --experiment mnist-sweep

Layout

The dashboard has three sections stacked vertically:

A single-line bar showing:

  • Experiment and run name (with run ID in parentheses)
  • Tags as inline badges
  • Epoch counter (e.g. Epoch 3/10) when an epoch metric is logged and epochs is set in the params
  • Step counter (the highest step across all metrics)
  • Elapsed time in HH:MM:SS
  • Status badge on the right: a colored dot and label

Metrics panel

A grid of braille-resolution line charts, one per user metric (system metrics prefixed with sys/ are excluded). Each chart shows the metric name, latest value, and best value when a goal is defined.

Charts are arranged in a responsive grid: 2 columns when the terminal is wide enough (at least 50 characters), 1 column otherwise. Rows are sized at 14 characters tall. When there are more metrics than fit on screen, they are split into batches and navigated with < / >.

The currently selected chart has a white border; unselected charts have a dim border. Pressing Enter on the selected chart opens the detail view.

System panel

A side panel (right 34% of the screen) showing four resource bars when system metrics are available:

  • CPU -- combined user (green) + system (cyan) percentage with sparkline
  • Mem -- system memory percentage and absolute GB with sparkline
  • Proc -- process CPU percentage with sparkline
  • RSS -- process resident set size in MB with sparkline

The bars change color based on utilization: green below 50%, yellow 50-80%, red above 80%.

Toggle the system panel on/off with [ or ].

A hint bar showing available keyboard shortcuts for the current mode.

Keyboard shortcuts

Dashboard mode

Key Action
Arrow keys Navigate the metric chart grid
Enter/Space Open the selected metric in detail view
< / > Previous / next batch of metrics
[ / ] Toggle the system panel
q / Escape Quit the dashboard

Detail view

Key Action
S Cycle EMA smoothing: Off, Light (1), Medium (2), Heavy (3)
q / Escape Return to dashboard

Status detection

The dashboard determines run status from the event log:

  • Live (green) -- new events are arriving.
  • Stopped (gray) -- no events received for 5 seconds. The run process may have crashed or been suspended.
  • Done (blue) -- a Finished event with status finished was received.
  • Failed (red) -- a Finished event with status failed was received.
  • Killed (yellow) -- a Finished event with status killed was received.

The dashboard polls the event log on every tick and transitions between states automatically.

Detail view

Pressing Enter on a metric chart opens a full-screen detail view. The chart fills 80% of the screen with full axis labels and gridlines.

EMA smoothing can be toggled by pressing S, cycling through four levels:

Level Alpha Effect
Off -- Raw values
Light 0.5 Mild smoothing
Medium 0.3 Moderate smoothing
Heavy 0.15 Aggressive smoothing

When smoothing is active, the chart title shows "(EMA)" and the footer displays the current level number.

The best value (determined by the metric's declared goal, or heuristically for keys containing "loss" or "error") is displayed below the chart.