Earlier, I wrote about a 2 a.m. incident. Production is slow, you open psql, the cursor blinks, and your hand freezes on the very first query. I introduced pgincident as a tool that breaks that "first-response paralysis" by giving you the whole picture on one screen.
When I show that article to people, there's almost always one thing that comes back first.
"Couldn't you just use pg_activity for that?"
Or "isn't pgcenter enough?" Fair question. Terminal-based Postgres monitors have been around forever. Anyone can picture "that kind of screen" the moment you say top, and I've personally been bailed out by both of those tools in the field more times than I can count. If I'm going to add one more TUI to the pile, I owe people a real explanation of what makes it different from the established standards.
This article is that explanation. It's not a case that pgincident beats everything. After taking honest stock of where the existing tools are strong and where they have a harder time reaching, where pgincident stands turns out to be a fairly narrow corner: managed Postgres × the Mac in front of you × first-response triage. That's where this lands. Read it as a stock-take, not a sales pitch.
