Inspects

An Inspect is a captured execution record.

Use inspects to understand requests, jobs, scheduler runs, CLI executions, and related runtime activity.

Product Naming

Use inspect and inspects for the product surface.

The correlation field can still be named trace_id where the code uses it.

What Inspects Capture

Inspects can include:

• timeline events
• logs
• HTTP request and response data
• job payloads
• queued child job payloads
• scheduler events
• source runtime identity
• duration and status

Retention Model

Source runtimes capture running inspects locally.

Finished inspect records are published to Lighthouse through a bounded buffer. Lighthouse owns the retained recent browsing window.

Important controls include:

LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_MAX_TOTAL
LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_MAX_INFLIGHT
LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_MAX_EVENTS
LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_SAMPLE_RATE
LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_BUFFER_SIZE
LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_FLUSH_INTERVAL
LIGHTHOUSE_INSPECT_FLUSH_BATCH_SIZE

If the buffer is full or Lighthouse is unavailable, new finished inspects can be dropped. Drop counters and flush metrics should make this visible.

Common Mistakes

Common mistakes

• Do not call the product surface traces in docs.
• Do not treat source runtimes as long-term inspect storage.
• Do not show fake request memory usage.
• Do not put child job payloads in the root job payload tab.
• Do not rely on inspects as the only production observability tool.

Next Steps

• Lighthouse
• Metrics
• Logging