Sherpa.AppInspector.Cli

App Inspector CLI

sherpa-inspector hosts only the MAUI Sherpa app inspector as a local web app. It is intended for host applications that want to start an inspector process and point an embedded WebView at the emitted URL.

The primary distribution is a .NET global tool NuGet package. Self-contained runtime-specific executables can still be published when a host app needs to bundle the inspector and avoid a .NET runtime dependency.

Install

dotnet tool install --global Sherpa.AppInspector.Cli

The installed command is sherpa-inspector.

Usage

sherpa-inspector serve --agent-port 9231

--agent-port is the only required input. The tool defaults to 127.0.0.1 for the target agent and binds its own web server to 127.0.0.1 on an ephemeral port.

Optional metadata can be supplied when the caller already has broker/session context:

sherpa-inspector serve \
  --agent-host localhost \
  --agent-port 9231 \
  --agent-id my-agent \
  --project /path/to/app \
  --session-id abc123 \
  --app-name MyApp \
  --tab tree

Ready output contract

When the server is ready, stdout contains a single sentinel line:

INSPECTOR_READY {"status":"ready","url":"http://127.0.0.1:54321/inspector/devflow/...","endpoints":["http://127.0.0.1:54321"],"pid":12345,"agent":{...},"stop":{...}}

Callers should wait for the INSPECTOR_READY prefix, parse the JSON that follows it, and navigate their WebView to url.

The payload includes:

Lifetime

The hosted page sends a heartbeat to the CLI process every few seconds. After the first WebView connection, the process exits when no heartbeat is observed for the configured idle timeout.

Stop options are also printed in the ready payload:

• Send Ctrl+C or SIGTERM to the process.
• Terminate the emitted pid.
• Call stop.shutdownUrl.

Use --no-auto-exit to keep the process alive until one of the explicit stop paths is used.

Security

The server binds to loopback by default and generates a per-run token. The emitted URL includes the token and the server stores it in an HTTP-only cookie for the interactive Blazor connection. Internal heartbeat and shutdown endpoints require the same token.

Use --listen-host only when the caller intentionally wants a different bind address. The inspector can interact with the target app, so exposing it off-machine is not recommended.

Distribution

CI builds Sherpa.AppInspector.Cli.<version>.nupkg as a dotnet tool package, uploads it as a workflow artifact, attaches it to tagged GitHub releases, and publishes it to NuGet.org from v* tag builds via trusted publishing.

Pack the tool locally with:

dotnet pack src/MauiSherpa.AppInspector.Cli/Sherpa.AppInspector.Cli.csproj \
  -c Release \
  -o artifacts/nuget

Install a local package for testing with:

dotnet tool install --tool-path ./.tools/sherpa-inspector \
  --add-source artifacts/nuget \
  Sherpa.AppInspector.Cli

Self-contained executable

Publish self-contained artifacts with a runtime identifier:

dotnet publish src/MauiSherpa.AppInspector.Cli/Sherpa.AppInspector.Cli.csproj \
  -c Release \
  -r osx-arm64 \
  --self-contained true

Expected release artifacts include runtime-specific executables such as osx-arm64, osx-x64, win-x64, and linux-x64.