Building a Docker Compose Visualizer CLI — See Your Stack at a Glance

Building a Docker Compose Visualizer CLI — See Your Stack at a Glance Modern applications rarely run as a single container. A typical production stack might involve a web server, an API gateway, a database, a cache layer, a message queue, a worker process, and half a dozen microservices — all wired together in a docker-compose.yml that has grown to hundreds of lines. At that scale, the YAML becomes opaque. Which service depends on which? What ports are exposed? Are there environment variables referencing a .env file that doesn't exist? Did someone change the staging compose file without updating production? In this tutorial, we'll build compose-viz , a Node.js CLI tool that parses Docker Compose files and gives you instant clarity: ASCII dependency graphs, port/volume/network tables, environment variable audits, drift detection between two compose files, and Mermaid diagram export — all from your terminal. The Problem With Large Compose Files Consider a compose file for a typical e-com