CIberus: A Three-Headed ASCII Guardian for Your CI Pipeline

Published: 3 days ago (February 14, 2026 at 03:43 PM EST)

5 min read

Source: Dev.to

CIberus is a zero‑dependency, terminal‑native DevOps companion that monitors your repository’s health and reflects it as a living ASCII creature – a three‑headed Cerberus that evolves, emotes, and suffers based on real CI signals.

The idea is simple: dashboards get ignored, Slack alerts get muted, and broken builds become background noise. But a visibly suffering three‑headed guardian in your terminal? That gets attention.

Health signals it tracks

GitHub Actions – run status and conclusion (via gh run list)
Green streak – length of recent successful CI runs
Flaky‑test heuristic – count of success/failure transitions
Code coverage – from coverage-summary.json or lcov.info
Documentation freshness – commits since README.md was last touched

Evolution stages

Score	Stage	Description
0‑39	Pup	Single head, small, struggling
40‑59	Sentinel	Two heads, lean, alert
60‑74	Gatekeeper	Three heads, muscular, gate base
75‑89	Infernal Guardian	Three fierce heads, horns, armor plating, braille flames
90‑100	Ascended Cerberus	Three majestic heads, braille wings, aura, pedestal

Moods

Five moods (calm, alert, worried, angry, critical) change the creature’s facial expression, aura effects, and coloring in real time.

Theme modes

Theme	Description
Mythic	Detailed pixel‑art using Unicode block elements (`█▓▒░▀▄▛▜`) and braille characters (`⣿⣷⢰⢾⣦⣄`) for fine detail, fur texture, and flame effects. No emoji – pure terminal‑safe characters.
Minimal	Clean ASCII (`/\_/\`), 5‑8 lines.
Corporate	Box‑drawing status panels. Intentionally bland.
Chaos	Procedurally corrupts the mythic art with deterministic braille‑noise injection (seeded PRNG) so `watch` mode doesn’t flicker.

The mythic art uses a template composition system instead of duplicating full art for every mood. Body templates contain {EYES}, {MOUTH}, {SNOUT}, {AURA}, and {FLAME} tokens that get swapped per mood, keeping the codebase clean while supporting 25 visual combinations (5 stages × 5 moods) from just 5 body templates.

Core Commands

ciberus init                     # Initialize config
ciberus status                   # Render current health
ciberus watch --interval 30      # Live monitoring loop
ciberus theme set chaos          # Switch visual theme
ciberus copilot run              # Non‑interactive Copilot analysis
ciberus copilot chat             # Interactive Copilot session with context

Demo

Repository:

Mythic Theme – Ascended Cerberus (calm)

               ✧
   ⣠⣴⣿⣿    ✧  ✧  ✧    ⣿⣿⣦⣄
  ⣸⣿⣿⣿  ┌───┐┌─────┐┌───┐  ⣿⣿⣿⣇
  ⣸⣿⣿  █▛ ◕‿◕ ▜█▛ ◕‿◕ ▜█▛ ◕‿◕ ▜█  ⣿⣿⣇
  ⣹⣿⣿  █  ᴖᴖ  █  ᴖᴖ  █  ᴖᴖ  █  ⣿⣿⣏
   ⣹⣿  █▄ ─  ▄█▄ ─  ▄█▄ ─  ▄█  ⣿⣏
    ⢹   ██▓══════════════▓██   ⣏
  ░░░░░ █▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓█ ░░░░░
  ░░░░░ █▓▓▓▓████████▓▓▓▓█ ░░░░░
  ░░░░░ █▓▓█▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒█▓▓█ ░░░░░
  ░░░░░ █▒█▒▒   ▒▒   ▒▒█▒█ ░░░░░
  ░░░░ ▄▄▄▄     ▄▄     ▄▄▄▄ ░░░░
  ░░ ════════════════════════ ░░
     ════════════════════════

Mythic Theme – Pup (calm)

       ✧
      ┌─────┐
     █▀ ◕‿◕ ▀█
     █  ᴖᴖ  █
     █▄ ─  ▄█
      ███████
      █▒█  █▒█
      ▄▄    ▄▄

Infernal Guardian (angry) – with braille flames

     ⢰⢾⣿⣷⣆     ⢰⢾⣿⣷⣆     ⢰⢾⣿⣷⣆
      ✧        ✧        ✧
     ┌────┐  ┌─────┐  ┌────┐
    █▛ ◉_◉ ▜█▛ ◉_◉ ▜█▛ ◉_◉ ▜█
    █  ᴖᴖ  █  ᴖᴖ  █  ᴖᴖ  █
    █▄ ⨷  ▄█▄ ⨷  ▄█▄ ⨷  ▄█
     ██▓══════════════▓██
       █▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓█
       █▓▓▓▓██████▓▓▓▓█
       █▓▓█▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒█▓▓█
       █▒█▒▒    ▒▒█▒▒█▒█
      ▄▄▄▄      ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
    ═══════════════════════

Full status output

CIberus

  [creature art rendered in color]

  CIberus is calm. The gates are secure.

  Stage: Gatekeeper
  ████████████████░░░░ 78/100

  Signals
  CI:                completed/success
  Green streak:      5
  Flaky transitions: 1
  Coverage:          85%
  Docs freshness:    3 commits since README.md
  Branch:            main

  Wins:
    + Latest CI run passed
    + Coverage is 85%

My Experience with GitHub Copilot CLI

CIberus has first‑class Copilot CLI integration baked into its command structure. The ciberus copilot sub‑commands bridge the gap between passive health monitoring and active remediation.

How the integration works

Command	Description
`ciberus copilot check`	Verifies that the standalone `copilot` CLI is installed and authenticated. This validates the toolchain before attempting any AI‑assisted workflows.
`ciberus copilot prompt`	Generates a context‑rich remediation prompt from live repo metrics (branch, CI status, green streak, flaky transitions, coverage, docs freshness) and wraps them into a structured request for prioritized fixes and exact terminal commands.
`ciberus copilot run`	Sends that prompt directly to the `copilot` CLI in non‑interactive mode. CIberus builds the full argument list (`-p --stream off -s`), handles auth errors gracefully, and prints the AI response. You can pass `--model gpt‑5` or `--allow-all-tools` flags through.
`ciberus copilot chat`	Opens an interactive Copilot session (`copilot -i` ) pre‑seeded with the same repo context, allowing a back‑and‑forth conversation about what to fix.

The workflow in practice

ciberus status           # See health at a glance
ciberus copilot run      # Get AI‑powered fix suggestions
# …apply fixes…
ciberus status           # Watch the creature evolve

End of cleaned markdown.

Overview

CIberus transforms a general‑purpose assistant into a DevOps‑aware one. Instead of manually providing context (“what’s wrong with my repo?”), CIberus automatically gathers signals, formats the context, and hands it off to the assistant.

The creature’s mood indicates when to ask for help.
The Copilot integration tells you exactly what to do.

Development Experience

During the build I used Copilot CLI to:

Scaffold shell‑command wrappers.
Debug gh run list JSON‑parsing edge cases.
Iterate on the scoring algorithm.

The copilot CLI’s ability to understand terminal context proved especially useful for:

Testing spawnSync argument patterns.
Validating ANSI escape sequences across different terminal emulators.

Project Details

Zero‑dependency: Node.js 18+ only, no external npm packages.
Testing: All 20 tests pass with the built‑in test runner:

node --test

The project remains lightweight, fully self‑contained, and ready for further DevOps integration.