Introduction
logbasset is an open source command-line tool, written in Go, for accessing and analyzing Scalyr logs. It’s a from-scratch rewrite of Scalyr’s original Python client, focused on the read-only operations you actually reach for day to day: query, power-query, numeric-query, facet-query, timeseries-query, and a live tail. Being a single Go binary, it’s trivial to distribute and run — no virtual environment to set up — and it plays nicely with CLI coding agents, which increasingly need reliable command-line access to services. If you want the full background, I covered it in the original release post.
What’s new in 0.5.0
Version 0.5.0 is mostly about making logbasset more pleasant and more robust in everyday use. Here are the highlights:
- Compact output mode with pager integration — browsing large result sets is now far more readable straight from the terminal.
- Bounded retries with backoff — API requests automatically recover from transient failures instead of giving up.
- Rate-limit handling — throttled requests are detected and retried gracefully, so queries no longer break under load.
- API token redaction — Scalyr tokens are stripped from verbose request payload logs, making it safe to share debug output.
- Machine-readable command metadata — particularly handy when logbasset is driven by CLI coding agents.
- Go 1.26.1 — the toolchain has been upgraded from Go 1.25.
- Better tests and docs — end-to-end CLI tests, installation smoke tests, and a README expanded with query recipes and troubleshooting guidance.
Installation
Install via Homebrew (macOS/Linux):
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Or grab a binary from the GitHub release page, or build from source:
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Conclusion
logbasset 0.5.0 keeps the same simple, read-only workflow while making it nicer to use and more dependable under load. If you work with Scalyr logs, give it a try — and if you have feedback or ideas, feel free to open an issue or send a pull request 🙂