What does GoCD Lens add over the GoCD dashboard?

It is a separate dashboard built for instances with thousands of pipelines. One request loads every group, pipeline and latest run; each card carries a per-stage strip, so you can see which stage broke without opening anything; fuzzy search finds a pipeline in four letters; and starring, watching, re-running selected jobs in a stage and tailing a console log are all on the screen you are already on. It reads GoCD's public REST API, so it shows the same data your server already has.

Does it work behind a VPN, a proxy or an internal certificate authority?

Yes. Requests are made from your machine over the same network stack as the GoCD tab beside it, and Chrome uses your OS trust store, so an internal CA works without configuration. If an SSO or auth proxy answers API requests with an HTML login page, switch to a personal access token, which carries its own credential and does not depend on cookies.

Does it work in Microsoft Edge and Brave?

Yes. It is a Manifest V3 extension requiring Chrome 116 or later, and Edge and Brave install Chrome Web Store extensions directly.

Is GoCD Lens affiliated with the GoCD project?

No. It is an independent MIT-licensed tool that uses GoCD's public REST API. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by the GoCD project or ThoughtWorks.

Is GoCD Lens open source?

Yes. GoCD Lens is MIT licensed and developed in the open at https://github.com/karan-2906/GoCD-Lens. There is no build step and no dependencies, so the files in src/ are the files that run and the source can be read directly. Issues and pull requests are welcome.

Is there a server component, or an account?

Neither. There is no backend, no account and no third party. The extension runs entirely in your browser and the only host it ever contacts is the GoCD server you name.

GoCD Lens — a modern, fast alternate UI for GoCD

Built for fleets that don't fit on one screen

Nothing here costs a request per pipeline, and no screen tries to draw them all.

One request for the whole fleet

A single /api/dashboard call returns every group, pipeline, pause state and latest run. There is no per-pipeline polling anywhere in the extension.

See where it broke

Every card carries a segment per stage in pipeline order, so a red third segment tells you it got through build and test and died in deploy — before you click anything.

Four letters is enough

Type wabp and get web-app-build-prod, with the matched letters picked out. Scrolling an alphabetical list is not a search.

Starring and watching are different

A star pins a pipeline to the top of every list. A bell interrupts you when it starts and when it finishes. Wanting something in reach and wanting to be interrupted by it are different wishes.

Re-run one flaky job

A stage of a dozen parallel end-to-end jobs is normal. Each job carries a checkbox with the failed ones already ticked, so retrying one takes a click — instead of burning twelve agents to find out.

Readable when the network isn't

The last payload is cached to disk. Drop the VPN and the dashboard still shows yesterday's failure, with a banner saying so and when it was from.

The search box containing wabp, showing one match, with the letters w, a, b and p highlighted inside web-app-build-prod — Four letters, one match, the letters picked out.

The same pipeline dashboard rendered in dark mode — Follows your system theme, or pin it light or dark.

Everything about one run, on one screen

Run history that pages as you scroll, the selected run's stages and jobs, manual approval gates marked as gates rather than as failures — and underneath, what the run was actually built from: repo, branch, commit, author, message, one click to the diff.

Chained pipelines show the upstream run that triggered them, one click away.

A pipeline's detail view: run history down the left, the failed run's build, integration and deploy stages with their jobs on the right, and the commit that triggered it below

Console logs, tailed

Live while the job runs, fetching only the lines added since the last poll. Severity colouring, search with next and previous, wrapping, download the whole thing, and the artifact tree behind the second tab.

Build logs are the least trustworthy data in the product, so nothing in this extension ever assigns markup — every line reaches the screen as a text node.

A job's console log with per-line timestamps, a red assertion failure, an amber deprecation warning and the GoCD agent's own lines in grey

A glance from the toolbar

The badge counts what is running, because that is the thing that changes. With nothing running it turns red and counts failures. An amber ! means it is showing cached data because GoCD is unreachable.

The popup gives you the same view picker, what is running now, then everything else — sixteen rows at a time.

What it costs your GoCD server

Worth being explicit about, because a dashboard everyone leaves open can quietly become a load problem.

1request per poll, whatever the fleet size

304on unchanged data — every poll sends the last ETag

0extra requests to watch a pipeline

0polls from a tab you are not looking at

A view narrows the payload at the server, which on a large instance is the difference between megabytes and kilobytes per poll. Several tabs and the popup share one cache, so three open tabs make one request, not three. Unattended background checking ships off: traffic with nobody watching deserves an explicit yes.

Everything stays on your machine

The extension can reach exactly one host: the one you named. These are not slogans — a test enforces each of them against the actual files.

Nothing leaves this computer. Settings, stars and the cached pipeline list go in chrome.storage.local. chrome.storage.sync — which uploads to Google and copies to every machine on your account — is never used anywhere.
No site access up front. host_permissions is an empty list. Access to one origin is granted at the moment you press Connect.
No content scripts. The extension cannot read, see or touch any page you browse. It has no tabs, cookies, webRequest, history or scripting permission either.
The credential never reaches a page. It lives in the background worker, which makes every request. The dashboard receives pipeline data only.
No remote code, no analytics, no third parties. Every script, style, icon and sound ships inside the extension, and the CSP blocks inline and remote script.

Three ways to sign in, starting with the session your browser already has — which stores nothing at all. Read the full privacy policy.

Install it

One click from the Chrome Web Store. Needs Chrome 116 or later, and works the same in Microsoft Edge and Brave, which install Chrome Web Store extensions directly.

Add to Chrome View the source

On first run the setup page opens. Enter the GoCD address you normally use — usually ending in /go — and press Connect. Setup verifies the credential against your server before saving it, so a typo or a blocked session surfaces there and then rather than as a mysteriously empty dashboard later.

Questions people ask

What does it add over the GoCD dashboard?

It is a separate dashboard built for big instances. One /api/dashboard call loads every group, pipeline and latest run; each card carries a per-stage strip, so you see which stage broke without opening anything; four letters find a pipeline; and starring, watching, re-running selected jobs in a stage and tailing a console log all happen on the screen you are already on. It reads GoCD's public REST API, so the data is the same data your server already has.

Does it store my GoCD password or token?

Only if you pick token or password sign-in, and then only in chrome.storage.local on your own machine. The default mode rides the GoCD session your browser already has and stores nothing at all. The settings page can learn the last four characters of what is stored — enough to tell two tokens apart — and nothing more.

Will it put load on my GoCD server?

One request per poll, not one per pipeline. Unchanged data costs an empty 304, a hidden tab does not poll at all, several tabs share one cache, and watching a pipeline adds no requests at all. For comparison: GoCD's own dashboard polls with two requests per cycle; this makes one.

Does it work behind a VPN, a proxy, or an internal CA?

Yes. Requests are made from your machine over the same network stack as the GoCD tab beside it, and Chrome uses your OS trust store, so an internal certificate authority just works. If the VPN drops, requests fail in seconds rather than hanging and the dashboard keeps showing the last data it loaded. The one setup that can bite is an SSO or auth proxy that answers API requests with an HTML login page — switch to a personal access token, which carries its own credential and does not depend on cookies.

Does it work in Edge and Brave?

Yes. It is a Manifest V3 extension needing Chrome 116 or later, and both install Chrome Web Store extensions directly. Text in the extension says "browser", not "Chrome", for that reason.

Can it read the other pages I browse?

No. There are no content scripts at all, and no tabs, cookies, webRequest, history or scripting permission. It ships unable to reach any site until you name your server.

Is this affiliated with GoCD?

No. It is an independent, MIT-licensed tool built on GoCD's public REST API, not affiliated with or endorsed by the GoCD project or ThoughtWorks. It is a browser version of lazygocd, a terminal UI for the same problem, and follows its endpoint choices.

Is it open source?

Yes — MIT licensed, and the whole thing is on GitHub. There is no build step and no dependency to audit: the files in src/ are the files that run, so what you read is what is installed. Issues and pull requests are welcome — CONTRIBUTING.md covers how to raise either.

Is there a server, or an account?

Neither. No backend, no account, no third party, no sign-up. It runs entirely in your browser, and the only host it contacts is your GoCD server.

A modern, fastalternate UI for GoCD.