Make your Rails CLI output beautiful. Railbow enhances migrations, routes, stats, notes, and more with colorful, emoji-rich, information-dense formatting.

Features

• Migrations - colorful db:migrate output with readable millisecond timing
• Migration Status - rich db:migrate:status with git authors, calendar view, table detection, landing dates, and time filtering
• Routes - color-coded HTTP verbs and highlighted parameters in rails routes
• Stats - beautiful rails stats tables
• Notes - rails notes with git blame, author colors, date filtering, and sorting
• About - polished rails about output
• Git Integration - authors, diffs, branch origin, landing dates, uncommitted file indicators
• Calendar View - month separators plus week ticks or full week rows, with optional per-section counts
• Multiple Databases - read one table by default, the rest summarized in a line each (and expanded when they have migrations pending); sharded databases merged with a status per shard
• Ghost Recovery - uses the mighost gem (optional) to recover names, authors, and branch badges for NO FILE migrations
• Smart Defaults - auto-disables in CI, piped output, NO_COLOR, and LLM agents

Installation

Option A: Add to your Gemfile (recommended)

gem "railbow", group: :development

bundle install

Option B: Use the CLI wrapper (no Gemfile changes)

gem install railbow
railbow rake db:migrate:status
railbow rails routes

The CLI creates a temporary wrapper so Railbow loads automatically without modifying your project's Gemfile.

Usage

Railbow works automatically once installed. Every example below works with both rails and rake commands.

rails db:migrate

Before:

==  CreateProducts: migrating =================================================
-- create_table(:products)
   -> 0.0028s
==  CreateProducts: migrated (0.0028s) ========================================

After:

🚀 CreateProducts: migrating...
  ✓ create_table(:products) → 2.8ms
✅ CreateProducts: migrated (2.8ms total)

rails db:migrate:status

This is Railbow's flagship feature. The plain Rails output:

Status   Migration ID    Migration Name
--------------------------------------------------
up       20260202145343  Add weight field to animals
up       20260203134528  Create vaccination records
up       20260210183902  Create pet tags
up       20260303120000  Add breed restrictions to adoption policies
up       20260313132325  Create veterinary appointments

becomes a rich, information-dense dashboard (with default config):

         Feb 2026   W06
 ↑↑    │ 20260202145343 │ 2026-02-02 14:53:43 │ Add weight field to animals          ● animals
 ↑↑    │ 20260203134528 │ 2026-02-03 13:45:28 │ Create vaccination records           ● vaccination_records
 ↑↑    │ 20260210183902 │ 2026-02-10 18:39:02 │ Create pet tags              ⤻ Mar 04  ● pet_tags
───────┼────────────────┼─────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────
         Mar 2026   W10
 ↑↑    │ 20260303120000 │ 2026-03-03 12:00:00 │ Add breed restrictions to…   ⤻ Mar 13  ● adoption_policies
 ↑↑    │ 20260313132325 │ 2026-03-13 13:23:25 │ Create veterinary appointm…  ⎇ PS-142  ● veterinary_appointments

Out of the box you get:

• Calendar separators - month + ISO week headers to orient you in time
• Status aliases - ↑↑ / ↓↓ instead of up / down (customizable)
• Created At - timestamp parsed from the migration ID
• Landing dates - ⤻ Mar 04 badge when a migration was merged to main after its creation
• Branch badges - ⎇ PS-142 showing the source branch/ticket
• Affected tables - color-coded table names extracted from migration files
• Time filtering - only the last 70 days shown by default (since: 70d), as a soft limit: never fewer than 10 migrations, however old (since_min: 10)
• Your migrations highlighted - rows authored by you are visually distinct
• Pending migrations greyed out - a down row keeps its status glyph but loses its colors

Weekly view

By default each new ISO week is marked with a tick on the date column (calendar: wticks). For a fuller weekly breakdown, wdividers gives every week its own separator row, and counts appends how many migrations sit under each separator, week or month:

RBW_CALENDAR=wdividers,counts rake db:migrate:status

         Feb 2026   W06 · 2 migrations
 ↑↑    │ 20260202145343 │ 2026-02-02 14:53:43 │ Add weight field to animals          ● animals
 ↑↑    │ 20260203134528 │ 2026-02-03 13:45:28 │ Create vaccination records           ● vaccination_records
         Feb 2026   W07 · 1 migration
 ↑↑    │ 20260210183902 │ 2026-02-10 18:39:02 │ Create pet tags                      ● pet_tags
         Mar 2026   W10 · 1 migration
 ↑↑    │ 20260303120000 │ 2026-03-03 12:00:00 │ Add breed restrictions to…           ● adoption_policies
         Mar 2026   W11 · 1 migration
 ↑↑    │ 20260313132325 │ 2026-03-13 13:23:25 │ Create veterinary appointm…  ⎇ PS-142  ● veterinary_appointments

Every separator carries the month, so the week number always sits at the same offset instead of shifting left on rows that open no new month, and every separator is drawn in the same muted purple. Both labels are strftime patterns: label: for months, wlabel: for weeks (defaulting to the same pattern).

RBW_CALENDAR is the list of week markers, so an empty value leaves you with month separators and nothing else:

view: "calendar,tables"
calendar: ""            # month separators only

Dropping calendar from view instead removes the month separators too.

Multiple databases

Rails runs db:migrate:status once per database, so a multi-database app used to get one blind table per database: widths that did not line up, the help printed once per database, and every git lookup repeated. Railbow now renders the whole run together.

By default you read one table: the first database in database.yml is rendered in full and every other one is summarized in a line each (db: focus).

📊 2 databases · primary, raw

──── primary · myapp_development ──── 122 of 1500 ──────────────────────
 ↑↑  │ 20260721130000 │ 2026-07-21 13:00:00 │ Partition sms notifications  ● sms_notifications
 ↓↓  │ 20260727170000 │ 2026-07-27 17:00:00 │ Add cr push columns to lines ● lines

⋯ raw · 5 migrations, all applied · latest Jul 22 2026

A database with migrations pending is always expanded, however focused the run is. The summary exists to hide what needs no action, and pending work is the opposite of that.

Setting db to an empty value expands every database that has recent activity, each as its own section with column widths shared so the tables line up:

db: ""            # or RBW_DB= on the command line

──── primary · myapp_development ──── 122 of 1500 ──────────────────────
 ↑↑  │ 20260721130000 │ 2026-07-21 13:00:00 │ Partition sms notifications  ● sms_notifications

──── raw · raw_development ─────────────────────────────────────────────
 ↑↑  │ 20260722120000 │ 2026-07-22 12:00:00 │ Drop archived activity logs  ● archived_activity_logs

A section header counts what it is showing: 122 of 1500 means 122 fell inside the time window. When the window found too few and the since_min floor topped the section back up, it reads last 10 of 50 instead, because the rows are then the newest ten rather than a window's worth.

Even then, a database with nothing in the time window collapses to one line rather than an empty table, which is what keeps the cache, queue and cable databases of a stock Rails 8 app from drowning out your own:

⋯ cache · 5 migrations, all applied · latest Feb 12 2024
⋯ queue · 12 migrations, 3 pending outside the 70d window - RBW_SINCE=all

Databases that share a migrations_paths (horizontal sharding) run the same files, so they merge into one table carrying a status per database. Drift between shards is then visible at a glance, and · marks a version a shard has never seen:

──── primary + primary_shard_one · db/migrate ──────────────────────────
 ↑↑ ↑↑ │ 20260601151200 │ 2026-06-01 15:12:00 │ Add owner id to pets
 ↑↑ ↓↓ │ 20260726143000 │ 2026-07-26 14:30:00 │ Add policy number to bills

RBW_DB controls the rest: only:<name> and skip:<name> (both repeatable) pick databases, full draws every section in full and overrides focus, and inline merges everything into a single table ordered by version with a Db column, so the calendar spans the whole application rather than restarting per database. focus never applies to an inline run - a merged table exists to hold every database at once.

A single-database app sees none of this: its output is unchanged.

If the mighost gem is installed (gem "mighost", group: [:development, :test]), migrations whose files were deleted (e.g. after switching branches) show up with a 👻 status and their recovered name instead of a bare ********** NO FILE ********** row - Railbow talks to it through the stable Mighost::API. Each ghost row carries the most informative badge mighost can provide: ≡ <version> when the migration was re-timestamped and lives on under another version (shown with a calmer 🪦 status), ⌥ <branch> when a branch still holds the file, or ✂ deleted in:<sha> pointing at the commit that removed it. Ghosts dismissed via mighost:dismiss (or hidden by hide_superseded) render as plain NO FILE.

rails db:migrate:down

⏪ CreateProducts: reverting...
  ✓ drop_table(:products) → 1.2ms
✅ CreateProducts: reverted (1.2ms total)

rails routes

HTTP verbs are color-coded (GET=green, POST=yellow, PATCH/PUT=cyan, DELETE=red), route parameters (:id, *splat) are highlighted, and controller#action pairs stand out.

rails stats

Code statistics rendered as a colorful table with highlighted totals and code-to-test ratio.

rails notes

Annotations enriched with git blame data - author names, commit dates, and color-coded tags (TODO=yellow, FIXME=red, OPTIMIZE=cyan, HACK=red, NOTE=green).

Configuration

Railbow works with zero configuration, but everything is customizable.

Config files

Config is loaded in layers (each overrides the previous):

1. Built-in defaults
2. Global: ~/.config/railbow/config.yml
3. Project: .railbow.yml (commit to git)
4. Local: .railbow.local.yml (gitignored, personal overrides)

Generate a config interactively:

railbow init
# or, within a Rails project:
rake railbow:init

Example .railbow.yml

since: 70d
since_min: 10
date: rel
git: "author:me,diff,mask:auto"
view: "calendar,tables"
calendar: wticks
db: focus

compact: "maxw:120"

aliases:
  columns:
    Status: Live
  values:
    Status:
      up: "↑↑"
      down: "↓↓"

Environment variables

Every option can also be set via RBW_* environment variables, which override config files:

Variable	Example	Description
RBW_PLAIN	1	Disable all formatting
RBW_FORCE	1	Force formatting even when piped, in CI, or run by an LLM agent (RBW_PLAIN=1 still wins)
RBW_SINCE	2mo, 70d, 1y, all	Filter migrations by time period
RBW_SINCE_MIN	10, 0	Never show fewer than this many migrations, however old (default 10; 0 disables)
RBW_DATE	full, rel, short, custom(%b %d)	Date display format
RBW_GIT	author:me,diff,mask:auto	Git integration options
RBW_VIEW	calendar,tables	Enable calendar view and table detection
RBW_CALENDAR	wticks, wdividers,counts, `` (empty)	Week markers: tick marks, full week separator rows, per-section counts. Empty means month separators only
RBW_DB	focus (default), `` (empty), only:primary, skip:cache, full, inline	Multi-database runs: focus one database, expand them all, pick some, or merge them into one table
RBW_COMPACT	oneline,dense,noheader,maxw:80	Compact display options
RBW_VERB	GET,POST	Filter routes by HTTP method
RBW_SORT	file, date	Sort order for notes
RBW_HELP	1	Show help messages

Quick examples

# Last 2 months, calendar view
RBW_SINCE=2mo rake db:migrate:status

# Relative dates, highlight your migrations
RBW_DATE=rel RBW_GIT=author:me rake db:migrate:status

# Full git context with table detection
RBW_GIT=author:all,diff RBW_VIEW=tables rake db:migrate:status

# Only GET routes
RBW_VERB=GET rails routes

# Notes sorted by commit date
RBW_SORT=date rails notes

How It Works

Railbow integrates through a Rails Railtie - it prepends formatter modules onto existing Rails classes without modifying your code:

• ActiveRecord::Migration - migration output
• ActiveRecord::Tasks::DatabaseTasks - migration status
• ActionDispatch::Routing::ConsoleFormatter::Sheet - routes
• Rails::Info - about
• Rails::SourceAnnotationExtractor - notes

Formatting auto-disables when:

• RBW_PLAIN=1 or NO_COLOR is set
• Running in CI (CI env var)
• Output is piped or redirected (non-TTY)
• Running inside an LLM agent (CLAUDECODE env var)

RBW_FORCE=1 overrides all of the auto-detection above (useful for capturing formatted output to a file, or letting an agent inspect the real rendering). An explicit RBW_PLAIN=1 always wins over RBW_FORCE.

Requirements

• Ruby >= 3.1.0
• Rails >= 7.2 (including 8.x)

Development

bin/setup          # Install dependencies
bundle exec rake   # Run tests + linting (RSpec + Standard)
bin/console        # Interactive prompt

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome at github.com/amberpixels/railbow.

License

MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.