Command line

goblin-mode-pro-cli talks to the running daemon over the session bus — works in a plain terminal or over SSH, no display.

goblin-mode-pro-cli status [--json]      current state
goblin-mode-pro-cli boost / unboost      force performance mode on/off
goblin-mode-pro-cli health               the 0-10 readiness score
goblin-mode-pro-cli sessions [--game N]  recent session history
goblin-mode-pro-cli benchmark "Wow.exe"  arm a benchmark for a game
goblin-mode-pro-cli preflight [--fix]    run the system check
goblin-mode-pro-cli report               a bug report to stdout
goblin-mode-pro-cli selftest [--apply] [--json]
                                          prove the privileged paths on this
                                          machine (needs no daemon)
goblin-mode-pro-cli setup                the full setup report
goblin-mode-pro-cli games                list profiles
goblin-mode-pro-cli compare GAME         diff the last two sessions for a game
goblin-mode-pro-cli works-for-me GAME [--note TEXT]
                                          share what worked (opens a pre-filled
                                          GitHub issue link, telemetry-free)
goblin-mode-pro-cli gamescope-session [--game NAME] [-- COMMAND...]
                                          launch a standalone gamescope session
                                          (Steam Big Picture by default)

selftest

Everything else here talks to the daemon. selftest does not — it goes straight to the privileged helper, so it still works when the daemon is the thing that's broken, and it needs no display.

It probes each privileged capability and reports what it found:

$ goblin-mode-pro-cli selftest
goblin-mode-pro selftest - read-only
  Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-10750H CPU @ 2.60GHz / intel, nvidia / cachyos 7.2.2

Helper and authorization
  PASS  Privileged helper         reachable on the system bus
  PASS  polkit policy file        installed, declares all 3 actions
  PASS  polkit agent              polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1 is running
  PASS  Helper capabilities       holds CAP_SYS_NICE, CAP_SYS_RESOURCE
...

Nothing ever SKIPs silently — "no writable PWM channel on this machine (the EC owns the fan curve, which is normal on a laptop)" is a result worth having, and is why fan spin-up does nothing on most laptops.

--apply

Read-only mode changes nothing, and so proves nothing: the values it reads are written by the root helper, so testing them as your user says nothing either way. --apply round-trips each capability — apply, read back, revert, read back — and reports what was observed at each step. It is the only mode that actually proves a write path works.

It restores everything it touches. Where a value is re-asserted rather than changed (power limits, sysctls) that is deliberate: it exercises the write path without moving your machine's thermal envelope as a side effect of a test. The fan test is capped at a few seconds and hands control back to the EC in a finally, on every exit path including Ctrl-C.

Expect a polkit password prompt: the kernel-tunable and thermal actions are meant to prompt. If a call times out, that's usually a prompt waiting for an answer on a screen you're not looking at.

--json

Machine-readable, and the most useful thing you can attach to an issue — it records the machine, every capability, and the observed values. The same data is embedded in goblin-mode-pro-cli report, and the human-readable version is behind About → Troubleshooting → Debug Information in the app.

Results from real machines are collected in Verified hardware. Please add yours.

Exit code

0 if nothing failed, 1 if any capability FAILed. A SKIP is not a failure — "this machine can't do that" is a valid answer, and the expected one for fan control on most laptops and ryzenadj on every Intel machine.