toolkit CLI and a web dashboard — every feature available in the terminal is equally accessible through the browser UI, so you can choose whichever interface fits your workflow without sacrificing capability.
What is Toolkit?
Local development comes with a familiar set of friction points. A process you forgot about is holding port 3000 hostage. Your disk is quietly filling up with hundreds of forgottennode_modules directories. Every project you start is reachable only at an unmemorable localhost:8472 address. And every time you need to add a hosts file entry, you have to open a terminal as administrator and edit a system file by hand.
Toolkit addresses each of these problems in one place:
- Blocked ports — scan, inspect, and kill processes occupying any port with a single command, no manual
lsofornetstatgymnastics required. - Disk bloat — recursively discover and remove
node_modulesfolders, Python virtual environments, build artifacts, and other heavyweight dev directories so you reclaim space in seconds. - Ugly localhost URLs — a built-in reverse proxy routes any running local server to a human-readable
*.localhostdomain (e.g.,http://my-app.localhost) without touching your hosts file. - Risky hosts edits — a safe, structured manager lets you add, toggle, and remove hosts file entries without ever opening the raw file as root.
Key Features
Port Management
List every open port on your machine, see which process owns it, and kill blocking processes instantly — all without memorizing platform-specific system commands.
Disk Cleaner
Scan any directory for
node_modules, virtual environments, and build caches. Preview exactly how much space you’ll recover before committing to a deletion.Local Reverse Proxy
Map any local port to a
*.localhost subdomain in one command. Toolkit manages the proxy lifecycle and keeps your routes persistent across restarts.Hosts File Manager
Add, edit, enable, and disable hosts file entries through a safe structured interface. No more manual root edits or accidental formatting mistakes.
How It Works
Toolkit runs a lightweight background daemon that powers both the CLI and the web dashboard. Everytoolkit command talks to the same daemon, which means the web UI at http://toolkit.localhost always reflects exactly what the terminal shows — there is no separate state to reconcile.
Any command that produces tabular output also accepts a --json flag, which switches the output to structured JSON. This makes Toolkit easy to integrate into AI-assisted workflows, CI pipelines, or shell scripts that need to consume port or proxy data programmatically.
Because the daemon uses standard Node.js APIs throughout, autostart and service registration work on all three platforms: Task Scheduler on Windows, systemd on Linux, and launchd on macOS. Install once and Toolkit is available the moment your machine boots.
Next Steps
Installation
Install Toolkit on your machine using Node.js 18+, pnpm, or bun in just a few steps.
Quick Start
Explore all four core features in under five minutes with hands-on examples.