s6-instance-status gives the status of a running instance of an instanced service, as a short human-readable summary or programmatically parsable output.
s6-instance-status [ -uwNrpest | -o up,wantedup,normallyup,ready,paused,pid,exitcode,signal,signum,updownsince,readysince,updownfor,readyfor ] [ -n ] servicedir name
The options are exactly the same as the ones understood by s6-svstat.
In fact, s6-instance-status is nothing more than a call to s6-svstat on the service directory representing the name instance. It is syntactic sugar so the user does not have to depend on the internal representation of instances and the location of instances' service directories.