obsidian-observability

Obsidian Observability

Contents

• Overview
• Prerequisites
• Instructions
• Output
• Error Handling
• Examples
• Resources

Overview

Implement comprehensive logging, metrics collection, error tracking, and a debug panel for Obsidian plugins.

Prerequisites

• Working Obsidian plugin
• Understanding of Developer Tools
• Basic TypeScript knowledge

Key Metrics

Metric	Type	Purpose
Command execution time	Timer	Performance tracking
File operations count	Counter	Usage patterns
Error rate	Counter	Reliability
Cache hit ratio	Gauge	Efficiency
Memory usage	Gauge	Resource health

Instructions

Step 1: Add Structured Logger

Create a Logger class with levels (debug/info/warn/error), history buffer, formatted output, and timing helpers.

Step 2: Implement Metrics Collection

Build MetricsCollector with counters, gauges, and timers. Add timeAsync() wrapper for measuring function duration with percentile stats (p95).

Step 3: Set Up Error Tracking

Create ErrorTracker that deduplicates errors by name+message, counts occurrences, and provides wrapAsync() for safe error capture.

Step 4: Build Debug Panel View

Register a sidebar view (dev mode only) that auto-refreshes every 5 seconds showing counters, timer stats, recent errors, and log history. Add export button for downloadable JSON debug bundle.

Step 5: Integrate in Main Plugin

Initialize logger, metrics, and error tracker in onload(). Wrap commands with metrics timing. Track command usage with counters.

See detailed implementation for complete Logger, MetricsCollector, ErrorTracker, DebugView classes and CSS styles.

Output

• Structured logger with levels and history
• Metrics collection (counters, gauges, timers with p95)
• Error tracking with deduplication
• Debug panel for runtime inspection
• Exportable debug bundle for support

Error Handling

Issue	Cause	Solution
Too much logging	Debug level in prod	Set level to 'error' in production
Memory growth	Unbounded history	Limit history to 100 entries
Performance impact	Sync logging	Use async patterns for file logging
Missing context	No error tracking	Wrap async calls with errorTracker

Examples

Quick Timing Check

const endTimer = logger.time('my-operation');
await doExpensiveWork();
endTimer(); // Logs: [plugin-id] my-operation (245.32ms)

Resources

• Chrome DevTools Performance
• Obsidian Developer Tools

Next Steps

For incident response, see obsidian-incident-runbook.