Michaelvessia Grove Logging Best Practices

Grove Logging Best Practices

This skill is for instrumentation design.

If the task is reproducing a bug from an existing trace, use .agents/skills/replay-debug/SKILL.md instead.

Architecture Overview

Grove uses a structured NDJSON event log toggled by --debug-record. When enabled, every frame render, state change, input, tmux command, and polling event is written to .grove/debug-record-{app_start_ts}-{pid}.jsonl. When disabled, a NullEventLogger discards all events at zero cost.

Key files:

• src/infrastructure/event_log.rs -- Event, EventLogger, FileEventLogger, NullEventLogger
• src/ui/tui/logging_state.rs -- state/dialog/tmux/toast event helpers
• src/ui/tui/logging_input.rs -- input pipeline logging helpers
• src/ui/tui/logging_frame.rs -- per-frame debug record payload
• src/ui/tui/update.rs -- update timing + message handling logging
• src/main.rs -- --debug-record flag parsing, path generation

Core Principles

1. Wide Events Per Boundary (CRITICAL)

Each log event should be a single, context-rich JSON object capturing everything relevant to that moment. Don't scatter multiple narrow log lines across a code path. Instead, build up context and emit one event at the boundary.

Good: one frame/rendered event with seq, hash, mode, focus, degradation, dimensions, input queue state, and the full frame buffer.

Bad: separate events for "frame started", "frame mode is X", "frame focus is Y", "frame done".

2. Event Identity: event + kind (CRITICAL)

Every event has two classification fields:

• event: the category (e.g., frame, tick, input, tmux_cmd, error)
• kind: the specific occurrence (e.g., rendered, scheduled, interactive_key_received)

This pair is the event's identity. Choose names that read naturally as event/kind: frame/rendered, tick/scheduled, input/interactive_forwarded.

Use LogEvent::new("event", "kind") to create events. The timestamp is captured automatically.

3. Rich Data Fields (CRITICAL)

Include high-cardinality fields (session names, frame hashes, input sequence numbers) and high-dimensionality (many fields per event). The debug record exists for post-hoc diagnosis of issues you haven't anticipated yet.

Add data with .with_data(key, value) or .with_data_fields(vec![...]):

self.event_log.log(
    LogEvent::new("preview_poll", "capture_completed")
        .with_data("session", Value::from(session.as_str()))
        .with_data("capture_ms", Value::from(capture_ms))
        .with_data("changed", Value::from(changed))
        .with_data("output_bytes", Value::from(output_bytes))
        .with_data("total_ms", Value::from(total_ms)),
);

4. Timing at Boundaries (CRITICAL)

Measure and log durations for operations that touch external systems or do significant work. Use Instant::now() before and after, then log the delta as _ms suffixed fields.

Common patterns:

• capture_ms / total_ms on preview captures
• tmux_send_ms on input forwarding
• duration_ms on tmux command completion
• draw_ms / view_ms / frame_log_ms on frame rendering
• update_ms on message handling
• input_to_preview_ms / tmux_to_preview_ms for end-to-end input latency

5. Zero Cost When Disabled (HIGH)

All logging goes through self.event_log.log() which dispatches to either FileEventLogger (writes to disk) or NullEventLogger (no-op). This means:

• Don't gate event construction behind if self.debug_record_enabled checks. The NullEventLogger handles this.
• Don't do expensive computation solely for logging. If you need to compute something expensive (like hashing frame lines), and it's only useful for logging, consider whether it should be part of the normal frame path.
• Frame line extraction in log_frame_render() is an exception, it walks the terminal buffer and is only called when debug recording is active.

6. Sequence Numbers for Correlation (HIGH)

Use monotonic sequence numbers to correlate events across the pipeline. Input events use seq (from self.input_seq_counter) to trace a keystroke from receipt through action selection, tmux forwarding, and preview update. Frames use seq (from self.frame_render_seq) for ordering.

When adding a new pipeline, assign a counter and propagate seq through all related events so they can be joined during analysis.

7. Consistent Field Names (HIGH)

Reuse existing field names when logging the same concept:

Event Categories

Frame events (frame/*)

Logged per frame render. Two events per frame:

1. frame/rendered -- full frame state (only when --debug-record is active): seq, frame_lines, frame_hash, width, height, line_count, non_empty_line_count, degradation, mode, focus, selected_workspace, interactive_session, sidebar_width_pct, preview_offset, preview_auto_scroll, output_changing, pending_input_depth, oldest_pending_input_seq, oldest_pending_input_age_ms, app_start_ts

2. frame/timing -- performance metrics (always logged): draw_ms, view_ms, frame_log_ms, degradation, pending_depth

Tick events (tick/*)

Polling lifecycle: scheduled, retained, processed, skipped, interactive_debounce_scheduled. Always include pending_depth and oldest_pending_age_ms on scheduling events.

Input events (input/*)

Full input pipeline: interactive_key_received, interactive_action_selected, interactive_forwarded, interactive_input_to_preview, interactive_inputs_coalesced. Always include seq and session.

Tmux events (tmux_cmd/*)

Command lifecycle: execute (with command string), completed (with command, duration_ms, ok, and error if failed).

State/mode events

Low-frequency state transitions: state_change/selection_changed, state_change/focus_changed, mode_change/mode_changed, mode_change/interactive_entered, mode_change/interactive_exited.

Error events (error/*)

Failures that need diagnosis: error/tmux_error. Include enough context to reproduce (command, session, error message).

Adding a New Event

1. Choose event category and kind name. Check existing events in src/ui/tui/ to avoid category drift.

2. Build the event at the boundary (completion of the operation, not the start):

self.event_log.log(
    LogEvent::new("my_category", "my_kind")
        .with_data("relevant_field", Value::from(value))
        .with_data("duration_ms", Value::from(elapsed_ms)),
);

3. Include timing if the operation is non-trivial. Capture Instant::now() before the operation and compute the delta after.

4. Include queue/pipeline state if the event is part of a flow (pending_depth, seq).

5. If the new event changes replay interpretation, also update .agents/skills/replay-debug/SKILL.md.

Anti-Patterns

1. Narrow events: Don't emit "started" / "finished" pairs when a single completion event with duration_ms suffices. Exception: operations that may never complete (like tmux_cmd/execute paired with completed).

2. Missing context: Don't log an error without the operation that caused it. Include the command string, session name, and relevant state.

3. Unstructured strings: Never eprintln!() for diagnostic info. Use self.event_log.log() with structured data. The only eprintln! in the codebase is for the debug record path at startup.

4. Logging in hot loops without gating: Frame line extraction is expensive. If you add similarly expensive logging, guard it behind self.debug_record_start_ts.is_some() like log_frame_render() does.

5. Inconsistent field names: Don't use elapsed when the convention is duration_ms. Don't use target_session when the convention is session.

6. Missing sequence numbers: If the event is part of an input or frame pipeline, include seq so events can be correlated during analysis.

Frame Data: What and Why

The frame/rendered event captures the full terminal buffer because:

• Visual bugs (flicker, blank frames, layout corruption) can only be diagnosed by seeing exactly what was rendered
• Frame hash enables change detection without comparing full content
• non_empty_line_count catches blank frame regressions
• degradation tracks frame budget health
• pending_input_depth + oldest_pending_input_age_ms reveal input queue pressure at render time

This is intentionally heavy data. It's gated behind --debug-record and only used during active debugging sessions.

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