[← Blog](https://watasu.io/blog) June 19, 2026

# Quick database answers and sharper log searches from the CLI

Some of the most-used commands aren’t the big ones. They’re the little reflexes — *how many rows did that import add?*, *show me the errors from the worker, not the health checks* — that you reach for a dozen times a day. When those have friction, you feel it every time.

So this one’s for the muscle memory. The latest CLI ships two additions we’ve wanted ourselves: a one-off SQL flag, and real filtering on `watasu logs`.

## Ask your database one question

`watasu pg:psql` has always dropped you into an interactive `psql` session. That’s the right tool when you’re exploring. But plenty of the time you don’t want a session — you have exactly one question, and you want the answer and your prompt back.

Now you can pass `-c` (or `--command`) and get just that:

```
watasu pg:psql --app my-app -c 'select count(*) from orders'
```

It runs the single statement, prints the result to stdout, and exits. No session to open, no `\q` to remember. Because it writes to stdout like any other command, it composes the way you’d hope:

```
# Drop it in a script, a cron job, or a quick health check
watasu pg:psql --app my-app -c 'select now()'

# Pipe it straight into whatever's next
watasu pg:psql --app my-app -c 'select email from users where banned' | sort > flagged.txt
```

Same database resolution rules as before — name the database, or let Watasu pick the one attached to your app. The interactive session is still one command away whenever you actually want to poke around.

## Filter logs to the lines you meant

`watasu logs` already lets you narrow by process type, by instance, by line count, and stream with `--tail`. What it couldn’t do was filter on the *content* of the lines — so you’d pull a wall of output and pipe it through `grep`, losing the niceties of the stream along the way.

Now there’s `-q` (or `--query`), which understands a LogQL-style subset right inside the command:

```
# Show error lines, but not the health-check noise
watasu logs --app my-app -q '|= "error" != "healthcheck"'

# Worker failures and timeouts, live
watasu logs --app my-app -q '{process="worker"} |~ "failed|timeout"' --tail
```

The pieces, briefly:

- **Selectors** like `{process="web"}` scope the stream before any text matching.
- **`|=` and `!=`** keep or drop lines containing an exact substring.
- **`|~` and `!~`** do the same with a regular expression — handy for `|~ "timeout|refused|5\\d\\d"`.

Chain them together and the query reads top to bottom the way you’d say it out loud: *this process, lines matching that, but not those.* It applies to live streams too, so `--tail -q '|= "error"'` is now a perfectly good way to sit and watch only what matters.

## Get started

Both land in the latest CLI — `brew upgrade watasu` (or grab it from the [install docs](https://docs.watasu.io/cli/install/)) and you’re set. There’s nothing to enable; the flags are there the next time you run the commands.

Small tools, but they’re the kind you stop noticing — which is exactly the point. If a one-liner you wish existed is still missing, tell us at <info@watasu.io>. A surprising number of these start as someone’s offhand “could it just…”.

Happy querying — and may your logs be quiet.

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