CLI Reference

Synopsis

dir-cpu [flags]

Flags

-base string default: cwd

Controls what filesystem path is used to represent each process.

Value	Path source	Best for
cwd	/proc/[pid]/cwd — the process's working directory	Scripts, interpreted languages, anything run from a project folder
exe	/proc/[pid]/exe — the process's executable binary	Compiled programs, system daemons

See cwd vs exe mode for a deeper comparison.

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-i duration default: 1s

Sampling interval. Controls how often CPU usage is recalculated and the display refreshed.

Valid Go duration strings: 500ms, 1s, 2s, 5s, etc.

Shorter intervals give more responsive output but slightly higher overhead from /proc reads. Values below 200ms are rarely useful since the delta will be very small.

dir-cpu -i 500ms   # fast refresh
dir-cpu -i 5s      # coarse but very low overhead

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-t float default: 0.5

Display threshold in percent. Directories whose total CPU usage is below this value are hidden.

Lowering the threshold reveals more entries, including light background tasks:

dir-cpu -t 0.0   # show everything including idle directories
dir-cpu -t 5.0   # show only directories consuming 5%+

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-n int default: 40

Maximum number of rows to print per cycle. When more directories exceed the threshold, a summary line is shown:

  ... 12 more

Increase this on tall terminals or when you need to see deep hierarchies:

dir-cpu -n 100

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Clean exit (Ctrl+C)
1	Fatal error reading /proc on startup

Notes

• Output is cleared each cycle with ANSI escape codes (\033[2J\033[H). Pipe-safe alternatives are not currently supported.
• CPU percentages may exceed 100% on multi-core systems. This is intentional and consistent with top -H behavior — each core contributes up to 100%.