I turned the psql commands I keep forgetting into buttons

A developer built cli2ui, a local web UI that turns frequently forgotten PostgreSQL CLI commands into one-click buttons. The tool runs on the user's machine, requires no AI or SaaS, and supports features like running queries, table inspection, safe transactions, and database snapshots. It is MIT-licensed and available on GitHub.

You know the command exists. You've run it a dozen times. But every single time you need to see what's actually running on your database, you end up typing some variant of: SELECT pid, state, query, wait event type FROM pg stat activity WHERE state = 'idle' AND pid = pg backend pid ; …and then googling pg stat activity columns halfway through because you forgot whether it's wait event or wait event type . I got tired of that. So I built cli2ui — a small web UI that turns the database CLI commands you keep half-remembering into buttons. psql -c "SELECT FROM pg stat activity" → one "running queries" button pg dump -t users mydb → one "back up this table" button SELECT pg terminate backend pid → one "kill this process" button No AI. No SaaS. No magic. It runs on your machine, right next to your database , and your connection credentials never leave your network. It's built for app developers and solo developers — not DBAs. The pitch is "you're looking at your tables 3 minutes after deciding to": docker compose up , connect, done. No install marathon, no connection-wizard maze, no digging through nested trees. A few of the things it puts one click away PostgreSQL today : \d table , and a row preview. SET TRANSACTION READ ONLY transaction so the statement timeout and a 1000-row cap. Write mode is opt-in and takes a whole-database safety snapshot pg stat activity and the blocking tree from pg locks + pg blocking pids , with one-click cancel / kill. wal level / max wal senders , connected standbys, slot create/drop, and a copy-paste pg basebackup command. pg settings + ALTER SYSTEM SET + pg reload conf , with reload-vs-restart badges. pg dump snapshots before every destructive change, restore of an uploaded dump streamed to the client tool not buffered in memory .The UI ships in English and Japanese with a header toggle. cli2ui has no authentication layer . That sounds reckless until you look at the threat model: it's a trusted local tool sitting next to your database, not a multi-tenant service on the internet. No accounts, no outbound calls, no AI. Your DB credentials stay on your machine. The moment you'd hold someone's database connection info on a server, the liability-and-encryption story swallows the whole project. Staying local keeps it honest — and the README is very loud about "don't expose this to an untrusted network." Being local doesn't mean being careless: psycopg2.sql.Identifier ; the few raw-SQL spots e.g. index access method, column type go through fixed allow-lists. autocommit=False and always ROLLBACK . localhost and drop your database , and X-Frame-Options: DENY stops clickjacking the destructive buttons. node modules . Panels are htmx partials; the page swaps innerHTML and that's the whole interaction model.That last bit is the thing I'm happiest about: adding a feature is small and mechanical, which is why the PostgreSQL coverage got deep instead of wide. git clone https://github.com/MR-TABATA/cli2ui cd cli2ui docker compose up then open http://localhost:8000 The connection form is pre-filled to point at a bundled sample database — hit Connect and you're looking at its tables. To point at your own PostgreSQL, change the form fields. Connecting to a database in another container trips everyone up — there's a whole networking guide https://github.com/MR-TABATA/cli2ui/blob/main/README.NETWORKING.md for that. It's MIT-licensed and the code is on GitHub https://github.com/MR-TABATA/cli2ui . The landing page is at cli2ui.com . If you've ever rage-googled pg stat replication columns, I'd love your feedback — especially on what command you reach for most that should be a button.