How to Use Nova Shell

6 min read Platform

Nova Shell is a powerful built-in terminal that lets you query metrics, search logs, run diagnostics, and automate tasks using natural language or Nova's query syntax. Think of it as a command line for your entire infrastructure.

Steps

Open Nova Shell

Press Cmd+K (Mac) or Ctrl+K (Windows/Linux) from anywhere in Nova to open the shell. You can also click the terminal icon in the bottom toolbar.

Run metric queries

Query any metric using Nova's query language:

nova> metrics get system.cpu.user where host=web-01 last 1h nova> metrics avg system.memory.used_pct by service last 24h

Search logs

Find logs across your entire infrastructure:

nova> logs search "connection timeout" service:api-gateway last 30m nova> logs tail service:checkout --follow

Use natural language

Not sure of the exact query syntax? Just type in plain English:

nova> show me the top 5 hosts by CPU usage right now nova> which services had errors in the last hour? nova> what caused the incident at 3am?

Nova's AI translates your question into a query and returns the results.

Run infrastructure commands

Execute commands on remote hosts (requires agent with remote execution enabled):

nova> exec host:web-01 "systemctl status nginx" nova> exec service:api "df -h"

Tip:

Save frequently used queries as aliases. Type nova> alias cpu-top = metrics top system.cpu.user by host limit 10 and then just run cpu-top next time.

Automate with scripts

Chain multiple shell commands into reusable scripts. Save them as runbooks for automated execution during incidents.

Export results

Pipe any query result to a file, dashboard widget, or Slack channel:

nova> metrics get error_rate by service last 7d | export csv nova> logs search "OOM" last 24h | send-to-slack #incidents

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