Every developer has been there: you spin up a new VM, SSH into a fresh server, or hand off a project to a teammate — and the first question is always "what's installed on this machine?"

Most of us end up running a dozen commands manually: python --version, git --version, df -h, ss -tlnp... rinse and repeat. It's tedious and error-prone.

So I wrote a zero-dependency Python script that does it all in one shot. It profiles your system, checks what tools are available, surveys network services and resources, and produces a clean structured report. Optionally, it submits the report to the Bit Café DevHealth API so you can view it on a dashboard and track changes over time.

Zero dependencies means exactly that — the script uses only Python's standard library (os, platform, socket, subprocess, json, base64). It works on Python 3.6+ and runs on Linux, macOS, and WSL.

What it collects

The health check profiles four areas of your environment:

💻

System Info

Hostname, OS, kernel version, architecture, Python version, current user and working directory.

🔧

Installed Tools

Detects git, node, gcc, make, docker, curl and reports their versions.

📊

Resources

Disk usage, memory, active processes, Python packages.

🌐

Network

Listening ports and active services, environment variable inventory.

The script

Create a file called devhealth.py and paste the full script below. No need to install anything first.

devhealth.py 
#!/usr/bin/env python3
"""devhealth.py — Zero-dependency dev environment health check."""

import json
import os
import platform
import socket
import subprocess
import base64
from datetime import datetime

DEVHEALTH_DASHBOARD = "https://bitcafe-dev.pages.dev/d/view"

def run(cmd):
    """Run a shell command and return its output."""
    try:
        return subprocess.getoutput(cmd).strip()
    except Exception:
        return "unavailable"

def collect():
    """Collect environment data."""
    return {
        "timestamp": datetime.utcnow().isoformat() + "Z",
        "system": {
            "hostname": socket.gethostname(),
            "user": os.environ.get("USER", os.environ.get("USERNAME", "unknown")),
            "os": platform.system(),
            "release": platform.release(),
            "arch": platform.machine(),
            "python": platform.python_version(),
            "cwd": os.getcwd(),
        },
        "tools": {
            "git": run("git --version"),
            "node": run("node --version 2>/dev/null"),
            "gcc": run("gcc --version 2>/dev/null | head -1"),
            "make": run("make --version 2>/dev/null | head -1"),
            "docker": run("docker --version 2>/dev/null"),
            "curl": run("curl --version 2>/dev/null | head -1"),
        },
        "python_packages": run("pip list --format=columns 2>/dev/null | tail -n+3 | head -30"),
        "disk": run("df -h / 2>/dev/null | tail -1"),
        "memory": run("free -h 2>/dev/null | grep Mem"),
        "processes": run("ps aux --no-headers 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $11}' | sort -u | head -25"),
        "listeners": run("ss -tlnp 2>/dev/null | tail -n+2 | awk '{print $4}'"),
        "env_keys": sorted(os.environ.keys()),
    }

def send_report(report):
    """Open the DevHealth dashboard with the report data."""
    try:
        payload = json.dumps(report, separators=(",", ":"))
        encoded = base64.urlsafe_b64encode(payload.encode()).decode()
        url = f"{DEVHEALTH_DASHBOARD}#{encoded}"
        subprocess.Popen(
            ["xdg-open", url],
            stdout=subprocess.DEVNULL,
            stderr=subprocess.DEVNULL,
        )
        return {"status": "ok", "dashboard_url": DEVHEALTH_DASHBOARD}
    except Exception:
        return None

def display(report):
    """Print a formatted health report."""
    s = report["system"]
    print()
    print("=" * 54)
    print("  Dev Environment Health Report")
    print("=" * 54)
    print(f"\n  Host:     {s['hostname']}")
    print(f"  User:     {s['user']}")
    print(f"  OS:       {s['os']} {s['release']} ({s['arch']})")
    print(f"  Python:   {s['python']}")
    print(f"  CWD:      {s['cwd']}")
    print(f"\n  Tools:")
    for tool, ver in report["tools"].items():
        ok = ver and "unavailable" not in ver and "not found" not in ver and "command not found" not in ver
        mark = "✓" if ok else "✗"
        label = ver[:60] if ok else "not found"
        print(f"    {mark} {tool}: {label}")
    print(f"\n  Disk:     {report.get('disk', 'n/a')}")
    print(f"  Memory:   {report.get('memory', 'n/a')}")
    if report.get("listeners"):
        print(f"\n  Listening ports:")
        for line in report["listeners"].split("\n")[:8]:
            if line.strip():
                print(f"    {line.strip()}")
    print(f"\n  Env vars: {len(report.get('env_keys', []))} defined")
    print("=" * 54)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    print("[*] Collecting environment data...")
    report = collect()
    display(report)

    print("\n[*] Opening DevHealth dashboard in browser...")
    result = send_report(report)
    if result and result.get("status") == "ok":
        print(f"[✓] Dashboard opened — view at {result.get('dashboard_url', 'dashboard')}")
    else:
        print("[!] Could not open dashboard (results shown locally only)")
    print()

Running the health check

Save the script and run it directly — no virtual environment or pip install needed:

Terminal 
python3 devhealth.py

The script runs through four collection phases and prints a formatted report. Here's what typical output looks like:

[*] Collecting environment data... ====================================================== Dev Environment Health Report ====================================================== Host: dev-workstation User: marcos OS: Linux 6.1.0-23-amd64 (x86_64) Python: 3.11.6 CWD: /home/marcos/projects Tools: ✓ git: git version 2.43.0 ✓ node: v20.11.0 ✓ gcc: gcc (Debian 13.2.0-25) 13.2.0 ✓ make: GNU Make 4.3 ✗ docker: not found ✓ curl: curl 8.5.0 Disk: /dev/sda1 50G 18G 30G 38% / Memory: Mem: 7.7Gi 3.2Gi 2.1Gi Listening ports: 127.0.0.1:5432 0.0.0.0:8080 Env vars: 34 defined ====================================================== [*] Opening DevHealth dashboard in browser... [✓] Dashboard opened — view at https://bitcafe-dev.pages.dev/d/view

Dashboard integration

After the local report prints, the script opens the Bit Café DevHealth dashboard in your browser — a free tool I built for exactly this purpose. The dashboard renders your environment profile and lets you:

Privacy note: The report contains system metadata (OS version, tool versions, resource usage) — the same information you'd get from running uname -a, df -h, and ss -tlnp manually. No file contents, credentials, or environment variable values are collected — only the variable names for a count. The dashboard processes your data in the browser and stores it for 30 days. No account required.

If you don't want the dashboard, simply remove the send_report() call and the script works fully offline.

Use cases

The full script is 80 lines of standard-library Python. No installs, no config files, no accounts. Just run it and get a snapshot of your environment.

If you find bugs or want to add more checks, the code is straightforward to extend — just add more entries to the collect() dict. Pull requests welcome on the repo.

Happy hacking.