CLI

Plain hora (no arguments) runs the monitor. Everything else is a subcommand that does its job and exits. Subcommands that touch the database (silence, incidents, annotate) open the daemon’s SQLite file directly - run them on the same host, from the daemon’s working directory (or with HORA_CONFIG pointing at its config). They refuse to create a database, so a wrong path fails loudly instead of operating on an empty file.

hora                                   # run the monitor
hora check                             # validate the config; non-zero exit on error
hora test-alert [monitor-id]           # send a test alert through the real chain
hora silence <ids|all> <duration> [reason]
hora silence list
hora silence clear
hora announce <title> [body] [--severity s] [--until 4h|18:00]
hora announce list / clear             # pinned status-page banners
hora top [--url U] [--token T]         # live terminal dashboard
hora digest                            # print the weekly digest (dry run)
hora report [YYYY-MM]                  # print the monthly SLA report (default: last month)
hora doctor                            # diagnose the runtime environment
hora incidents [limit]                 # list recent incidents with their ids
hora annotate <id|last> "<note>"       # attach a note to an incident
hora backup <dest.db>                  # consistent snapshot (VACUUM INTO)
hora import kuma backup.json           # convert an Uptime Kuma backup (stdout)
hora --version

hora check

Validates the configuration and exits non-zero on error - made for CI and pre-deploy hooks. Validation is strict; see Configuration.

hora test-alert

Sends a clearly-labelled test alert (a down, then its recovery) through the real dispatch path, so delivery is verified before the first real incident instead of during it. Without an id every configured channel is exercised; with one, exactly the channels that monitor’s notify routing would fire. A failing channel logs a warning with the rejection detail (“chat not found”, HTTP 403, …) and the command exits non-zero, naming the failing channels - made for CI. An unknown id lists the configured ones.

hora silence

Ad-hoc alert muting - the scriptable counterpart of a [[maintenance]] window, made for deploy hooks:

hora silence api,web 10m "deploying"   # comma-separated ids, or 'all'
hora silence list                      # active silences, soonest-expiring first
hora silence clear                     # remove every silence

Durations look like 90s, 10m, 1h30m (max 7 days). Checks keep being recorded; only alert transitions are muted, picked up by the daemon on its next tick. Unknown ids are rejected with the configured list. The same action exists over HTTP as POST /api/silence for CI pipelines.

hora announce

Pins a public banner on the status page - see Announcements. --until takes a duration (4h) or a UTC clock time (18:00, the next occurrence); without it the banner stays until hora announce clear.

hora top

A live terminal dashboard over the JSON API: per-monitor statuses, 24h uptime, p50/p95/p99, a latency sparkline for the selected monitor (arrow keys), and the current trouble. --url and --token point it at any Hora - local or remote (HORA_TOKEN works too, keeping the token out of ps); without --url the local config’s bind address is used, so hora top just works on the daemon’s host - including inside docker exec -it hora hora top.

It also acts, through the same authenticated API (--token required):

Key	Action
a	Pin an announcement: title :: body, optional --severity / --until
s	Silence the selected monitor (pre-filled 10m, editable)
C	Clear every pinned announcement
↑/↓	Select (the sparkline follows, debounced)
r / q	Force a refresh / quit

Pinned banners show in the trouble panel, so what you announce is what you see. Selection scrolling is debounced and a server 429 backs the polling off, so hora top stays comfortably within the default API rate limit.

hora digest

Prints the weekly digest exactly as the [digest] task would send it - a dry run to check the wording (and the data) without notifying anyone. See Weekly digest.

hora report

Prints the monthly SLA report as text - the terminal twin of the printable /report/{month} page. Defaults to last month.

hora doctor

Diagnoses the runtime environment against what the configuration needs - hora check says the config is sound, hora doctor says the host can honour it. Checks: database writable, listen port free (busy is a warning - the daemon is probably just running), IPv4/IPv6 routes (no packets sent), the unprivileged ICMP datagram socket (the rootless-Docker net.ipv4.ping_group_range catch), and a real system-resolver lookup. Failures are judged against the config - no IPv6 route only fails when a dual_stack monitor needs one - and the process exits non-zero on any missing needed capability.

hora incidents

Lists recent incidents (default 20) with their ids - the lookup companion of annotate:

#42  API  2026-06-10 03:12:04 UTC -> 2026-06-10 03:15:10 UTC (3m 6s)
      error: HTTP 503: upstream database unreachable
      answered: HTTP/2.0 503 Service Unavailable
      note:  fiber cut

hora annotate

Attaches a free-form operator note to an incident, shown on /history and in the Atom feed:

hora annotate 42 "fiber cut, ETA 6pm"
hora annotate last "fiber cut"     # the most recent incident
hora annotate 42 ""                # an empty note clears it

hora backup

Snapshots the database with SQLite’s VACUUM INTO: consistent and compacted, safe while the daemon is writing. The source is opened read-only (a backup never creates or migrates a database), an existing destination is refused, and the snapshot is created owner-only (0600) like the live database. A one-liner in a cron job pointed at a NAS mount:

hora backup /mnt/nas/hora-$(date +%F).db

hora import kuma

Converts an Uptime Kuma backup JSON to Hora monitors on stdout. See Importing from Uptime Kuma.