Procfile quickstart

Use this example if you have a handful of development commands and want Kranz without learning its YAML format first.

What it demonstrates

• automatic Procfile discovery;
• one service per name: command line;
• adjacent .env loading;
• separate logs for concurrent processes;
• automatic listener discovery for a child process.

Run it

From the repository root:

cp examples/procfile/.env.example examples/procfile/.env
cd examples/procfile
kranz

Kranz discovers Procfile because there is no native configuration in this directory. You should see three stopped services: clock, environment, and web.

Walk through the UI

1. Press a, then s, to start all three.
2. Focus clock: its log prints the current time every two seconds.
3. Focus environment: its log shows MESSAGE from the adjacent .env file.
4. Focus web and inspect Details. The command contains a port, but Kranz does not parse shell text to guess it. Instead it observes the real listener from the process group and reports it as detected.
5. Open the displayed localhost URL in a browser.
6. Press s, confirm the stop, then q.

The complete Procfile

clock: while true; do date; sleep 2; done
environment: while true; do echo "MESSAGE=${MESSAGE:-hello from Procfile}"; sleep 5; done
web: python3 -u -m http.server ${PORT:-8123} --bind 127.0.0.1

There is intentionally no Kranz-specific syntax here. Procfile is the entry point; native YAML is the upgrade path when you need dependencies or actions.

Try changing it

Edit .env:

MESSAGE=hello from my project
PORT=8124

Press Ctrl+L in Kranz to reload. Restart the affected services and inspect the new output and listener.

Cleanup

Stop the services from Kranz, then optionally remove the copied file:

rm .env

Next: add dependencies and readiness with native YAML.