"Couldn't you just use pg_activity? — staking out one corner of Postgres incident triage"

Short summary

Technical comparison of three PostgreSQL monitoring tools (pg_activity, pgcenter, pgincident) for production incident triage. Existing tools excel on self-managed Linux servers with system-level visibility, but pgincident addresses a specific gap: managed Postgres services like RDS and Cloud SQL on local Mac workstations. Honest evaluation of trade-offs rather than a sales pitch.

• •pg_activity and pgcenter work best on self-managed Linux with direct host access and superuser privileges
• •Both struggle with managed services (RDS, Cloud SQL, Aurora) where SSH and elevated privileges aren't available
• •pgincident fills a narrow niche: Mac-based triage for managed Postgres, prioritizing managed-environment compatibility over system-level visibility

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