Docker container failure notifications to your phone

Q: How do I get Docker container crash notifications on my phone?

Use docker events or a cron script that checks docker ps for unhealthy or exited containers, then pipe the output to nerve send.

Why Nerve for Docker

Docker containers fail silently. A restart policy hides crashes. An unhealthy container serves errors. Nerve sends an encrypted push to your phone so you know immediately — without polling a dashboard or waiting for an email digest.

Watch Docker events in real time

Stream container lifecycle events and alert on deaths.

docker events --filter event=die --format '{{.Actor.Attributes.name}} exited' \
  | while read -r line; do echo "$line" | nerve send; done

Cron: check for unhealthy containers

A cron job that runs every 2 minutes and alerts on unhealthy or exited containers.

# /etc/cron.d/nerve-docker-check
*/2 * * * * root docker ps --filter "health=unhealthy" --format "unhealthy: {{.Names}}" \
  | nerve send --severity critical 2>/dev/null || true

Docker Compose health check

Add a watcher service to your docker-compose.yml that monitors other containers.

services:
  app:
    image: my-app:latest
    healthcheck:
      test: ["CMD", "curl", "-f", "http://localhost:3000/health"]
      interval: 30s
      retries: 3

  nerve-watcher:
    image: alpine:latest
    depends_on:
      - app
    environment:
      - NERVE_DSN=nerve://TOKEN:[email protected]
    entrypoint: /bin/sh -c
    command: |
      apk add --no-cache curl docker-cli &&
      while true; do
        UNHEALTHY=$(docker ps --filter "health=unhealthy" --format "{{.Names}}")
        if [ -n "$UNHEALTHY" ]; then
          echo "unhealthy: $UNHEALTHY" | nerve send --severity critical
        fi
        sleep 120
      done

After a container exits

Capture the last 20 lines of logs from a crashed container and send them as context.

CONTAINER="my-app"
docker wait "$CONTAINER" && \
  docker logs --tail 20 "$CONTAINER" 2>&1 \
  | nerve send --severity critical

Quick start

go install github.com/nerve-ink/nerve-cli/cmd/nerve@latest
export NERVE_DSN="nerve://TOKEN:[email protected]"
echo "container my-app exited with code 137" | nerve send

FAQ

How do I get Docker crash notifications on my phone?

Use docker events or a cron script that checks docker ps for unhealthy or exited containers, then pipe the output to nerve send.

Does Nerve work with Docker Compose?

Yes. Store the NERVE_DSN as an environment variable and add a health-check sidecar or a cron-based watcher that calls nerve send on failure.

Are Docker alerts encrypted?

Yes. All signal payloads are end-to-end encrypted. The Nerve relay sees only ciphertext.

Docker container failure notifications to your phone.