ctk tail

ctk tail displays the “most recent” records in a database table. It also provides special decoding options for the sys.jobs_log table.

General usage

Synopsis

CrateDB Toolkit is installed on your machine.

ctk tail -n 3 sys.summits

CrateDB Toolkit is not installed on your machine, but uv is.

uvx --from=cratedb-toolkit ctk tail -n 3 sys.summits

Options

You can combine ctk tail’s JSON and YAML output with programs like jq and yq.

ctk tail -n 3 sys.summits --format=json | jq
ctk tail -n 3 sys.summits --format=yaml | yq

Feature: Option --follow

Optionally poll the table for new records by using the --follow option.

ctk tail -n 3 doc.mytable --follow

Warning

Because ctk tail works by submitting SQL commands to CrateDB, using its --follow option will spam the sys.jobs_log with additional entries. The default interval is 0.1 seconds, and can be changed using the --interval option. Please handle with care, and don’t leave stray commands running on your database cluster unattended.

Feature: Decoding sys.jobs_log

ctk tail provides a special decoder when processing records of the sys.jobs_log table. The default output format --format=log prints records in a concise single-line formatting.

ctk tail -n 3 sys.jobs_log

The --format=log-pretty option will format the SQL statements nicely pretty-printed, ready for copy/paste into other documents.

ctk tail -n 3 sys.jobs_log --follow --format=log-pretty

Together with the --follow option, this provides optimal support for ad hoc tracing of SQL statements processed by CrateDB.

Example

docker run --rm --publish='4200:4200' crate '-Cdiscovery.type=single-node'
export CRATEDB_CLUSTER_URL='crate://'
uvx --from=cratedb-toolkit ctk tail -n 3 --follow --format=log-pretty sys.jobs_log

2026-04-26 02:19:45.903 [0:00:01] INFO    : Success SQL:
SELECT last_execution
FROM "stats".jobstats_last
2026-04-26 02:19:45.906 [0:00:04] INFO    : Success SQL:
SELECT id,
       stmt,
       calls,
       avg_duration,
       bucket,
       username,
       query_type,
       nodes,
       last_used
FROM "stats".jobstats_statements
ORDER BY calls DESC,
         avg_duration DESC;