Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs stored in ClickHouse

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by r0b3r4 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @03:28AM (#43181863)

Hey everyone!

I’m working Telescope - an open-source web-based log viewer designed to make working with logs stored in ClickHouse easier and more intuitive.

I wasn’t happy with existing log viewers - most of them force a specific log format, are tied to ingestion pipelines, or are just a small part of a larger platform. Others didn’t display logs the way I wanted.

So I decided to build my own lightweight, flexible log viewer - one that actually fits my needs.

Check it out:

    Video demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IItMOXwugY

    GitHub: https://github.com/iamtelescope/telescope

    Live demo: https://telescope.humanuser.net

    Discord: https://discord.gg/rXpjDnEc

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by akdor1154 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @05:31AM (#43182498)

Cool! I'm currently playing with the Grafana Clickhouse connector to do broadly similar - are these compatible? Can Telescope read an OTEL logs table in Clickhouse?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by r0b3r4 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @06:17AM (#43182679)

Yes, this is exactly where Telescope can be useful (and actually, the way Grafana displays logs was my motivation for writing my own viewer)

Telescope can work with any table in ClickHouse. Of course, not every single ClickHouse type has been tested, but there shouldn’t be any issues with the most common ones

If you want, you can check how it works with the OTEL schema in the live demo here: https://telescope.humanuser.net/sources/otel-demo/explore

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by oulipo on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @09:40AM (#43184003)

Very cool! Would be nice to have a library for the frontend components for the log viewer, to be able to reuse them in other projects :)

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by r0b3r4 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @11:37AM (#43185306)

Nice idea! However, I’m not experienced enough with Vue (and frontend) development to properly design an exportable component. So, at least for now, I don’t think I’ll be able to make it happen myself.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by smjburton on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @09:56AM (#43184186)

Would this also work with something like Plausible (https://github.com/plausible/analytics) which uses ClickHouse to store web analytics data, or is it primarily for log data?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by r0b3r4 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @11:34AM (#43185265)

Despite the fact that Telescope is focused on application log data, it could be used for any type of data as long as it's stored in ClickHouse and has some time fields.

At the moment, I have no plans to support arbitrary data visualization in Telescope, as I believe there are better BI-like tools for that scenario.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by smjburton on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @12:36PM (#43185966)

Yeah that's fair, thank you.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by ericb on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @10:55AM (#43184835)

Very cool! Just digging in. Does it works with the new JSON format clickhouse introduced recently?

Also, what service did you use to make the video, if you don't mind my asking?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by r0b3r4 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @11:29AM (#43185210)

Thanks!

I haven't tested the new JSON format in ClickHouse yet, but even if something doesn't work at the moment, fixing it should be trivial.

As for the video service, it wasn’t actually a service but rather a set of local tools:

- Video capture/screenshots - macOS default tools

- Screenshot editing - GIMP

- Voice generation - https://elevenlabs.io/app/speech-synthesis/text-to-speech

- Montage – DaVinci Resolve 19

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Telescope – an open-source web-based log viewer for logs ... by mikeshi42 on Wednesday February 26, 2025 @12:04PM (#43185587)

This looks pretty cool, I love seeing more clickhouse-native logging platforms springing up! It's a surprisingly underrated platform to build on when I talk to other engineers.

I'm one of those authors of an existing log viewer (hyperdx) and was curious if we were one of those platforms that didn't fit your needs? Always love learning what use cases inspire different approaches.

[ Parent | on HN ]