traceway

Traceway

Drive a Traceway instance from the terminal with the traceway CLI. The first word of the argument decides the flow:

Invocation	Flow
/traceway login	Login: install the CLI if missing, authenticate, select a project
/traceway debug <issue ref or bug description>	Debug: resolve the issue and investigate to root cause
/traceway <anything else>	Query: answer the observability question with CLI reads
/traceway (no argument)	Ask what they want: log in, debug an issue, or run a query

The CLI is under active development. If a flag documented here does not appear in traceway <command> --help, trust the binary.

Ground Rules (All Flows)

• Reads are safe: any list / show / query subcommand may run freely; they never mutate server state.
• Writes require explicit user instruction: exceptions archive / unarchive are the only mutating data commands; only run them when the user asks by name, with --yes in non-interactive contexts. "Look at this error" means read it, not archive it.
• Output: piped output defaults to JSON (table on a TTY). Prefer JSON + jq, and --fields a,b,c to trim responses. Keep --page-size at 10 to 20 for triage.
• Time windows: always bound queries, default --since 1h for "now" questions, --since 24h otherwise. --since accepts s, m, h, lowercase Nd (no 1w, no 7d2h). Absolute windows via --from / --to (RFC3339).
• Exit codes: 0 ok, 1 generic/API, 2 usage, 3 connection, 4 auth, 5 not found, 6 rate limited, 7 server 5xx. Errors emit {"error":"<stable_id>","message":"...","hint":"...","exit_code":N} on stderr; branch on the error field.
• On exit code 4 (auth), do not run traceway login yourself; switch to the Login flow and let the user enter credentials.

Resolving Dashboard URLs

Users paste dashboard URLs (https://<instance>/<route>) as references in any flow. Resolve by route family:

URL path	Identifies	How to fetch it
/issues/<hash> and /issues/<hash>/events	Exception group (hash = 16 hex chars)	traceway exceptions show <hash>
/issues/<hash>/<occurrenceId> (UUID)	One occurrence within the group	traceway exceptions show <hash> --output json | jq '.occurrences[] | select(.id=="<occurrenceId>")'; occurrences are paginated, walk --page if not in the first page
/endpoints/<endpoint>	Endpoint group; the segment is the URL-encoded endpoint name (GET%20%2Fapi%2Fusers%2F%3Aid is GET /api/users/:id)	Decode it, then traceway endpoints list --search "<decoded name>" (there is no endpoints show)
/endpoints/<endpoint>/<endpointId>	One request (transaction) of that endpoint	No CLI for single transactions; fetch the group as above, correlate with traceway logs query --trace-id <id> if a trace ID is known from context
/tasks/<task> and /tasks/<task>/<taskId>	Background task group / single run	No CLI; point the user at the dashboard Tasks page
/sessions/<sessionId>	Session replay	No CLI; dashboard only. Occurrences reference sessions via their sessionId field
/ai-traces/<traceName> and /ai-traces/<traceName>/<traceId>	AI trace group / single trace	No CLI; dashboard only
/logs	Logs page (its filters are not stored in the URL)	traceway logs query with flags taken from the user's description
/issues, /endpoints, /metrics, /	List and dashboard pages	The matching list / query command

Time window: most dashboard URLs carry ?preset=<p> or ?from=<iso>&to=<iso> (sticky across pages); honor them instead of the default window.

• preset values 5m 30m 60m 3h 6h 12h 24h 3d 7d map directly to --since; the CLI has no month unit, so map 1M to --since 30d and 3M to --since 90d.
• from/to are ISO timestamps; pass via --from/--to, appending Z (or the correct offset) when missing, since the CLI requires RFC3339.
• No time params means the page was on its default; pick --since per the ground rules.

Flow: Login

1. Check for an existing install

traceway version

If it prints a version, skip to authentication.

2. Install if missing

Prebuilt binaries are on the tracewayapp/traceway releases page under cli/vX.Y.Z tags (the latest release may be a Backend release, so filter for CLI tags):

OS=$(uname -s | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]')
ARCH=$(uname -m); [ "$ARCH" = "aarch64" ] && ARCH=arm64
URL=$(curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/tracewayapp/traceway/releases?per_page=20" \
  | grep -o "https://[^\"]*traceway_[^\"]*_${OS}_${ARCH}\.tar\.gz" | head -1)
TMP=$(mktemp -d)
curl -sL "$URL" | tar -xz -C "$TMP"
install -m 755 "$TMP/traceway" ~/.local/bin/traceway && rm -rf "$TMP"

Make sure ~/.local/bin is on PATH (or install to /usr/local/bin). Fallback, build from source (requires Go):

git clone https://github.com/tracewayapp/traceway && cd traceway/cli
go build -o bin/traceway ./cmd/traceway && install -m 755 bin/traceway ~/.local/bin/traceway

Verify with traceway version.

3. Authenticate

Login prompts for the password interactively, so ask the user to run it themselves (in Claude Code, suggest typing ! traceway login --url https://<instance> so the output lands in the session):

traceway login --url https://<traceway-instance>

Non-interactive alternative when the password is in a secret store (never echo a password into the command line or shell history):

printf '%s' "$TRACEWAY_PASSWORD" | traceway login --url https://<instance> --username you@example.com --password-stdin

Multiple instances or accounts coexist via profiles: traceway login --url ... --profile work, then traceway profiles list / traceway profiles use work.

4. Select a project and smoke-check

traceway projects list
traceway projects use <project-id>
traceway exceptions list --since 24h

The selected project is used implicitly by all subsequent commands.

Flow: Debug

/traceway debug issue X or /traceway debug <free-form bug description>.

1. Resolve the issue reference

X can be several things; resolve it to an exception hash (16 hex chars):

Reference looks like	How to resolve
Dashboard URL	See "Resolving Dashboard URLs" above; for /issues/... URLs the path segment right after /issues/ is the hash, and ?preset/?from/?to give the time window
Bare 16-char hex string	Already the hash
Anything else (title, error message, type, file name)	Search: traceway exceptions list --since 7d --search "<text>"; widen to --since 30d (and --include-archived) if empty
No issue reference, just a bug description	Skip to triage below

When a search returns multiple groups, show a shortlist (hash, count, lastSeen, first stack line) and ask the user which one before drilling in.

traceway exceptions list --since 7d --search "checkout" --output json \
  | jq '.data[]? | {hash: .exceptionHash, count, lastSeen, top: (.stackTrace | split("\n")[0])}'

2. Drill into the issue

traceway exceptions show <hash>

This is the high-value call: full stack trace, occurrence list with recordedAt, attributes (user IDs, app versions, request context), and optional distributedTraceId / sessionId per occurrence. firstSeen correlates with deploys: a group that first appeared right after a release points at that release's diff. A bogus hash exits 5 with not_found; fall back to search.

3. Triage and correlate (also the entry point for free-form bug descriptions)

From the description extract symptom, affected endpoint/feature, and time window, then read several signals before forming a hypothesis:

traceway exceptions list --since 24h --order-by lastSeen        # what is erroring (firstSeen for regressions, count for volume)
traceway logs query --since 24h --min-severity 17               # errors and worse
traceway logs query --since 24h --search "payment declined"     # search log bodies
traceway logs query --since 24h --service checkout-api --min-severity 13
traceway endpoints list --since 24h --search "checkout"         # latency p50/p95/p99 and error counts, --order-by impact|count|p95|lastSeen

Severity is an OTel number, not a name: 1 TRACE, 5 DEBUG, 9 INFO, 13 WARN, 17 ERROR, 21 FATAL. The flag is --min-severity 17, never --severity error.

Correlate by trace: when an occurrence or log line carries a trace ID, pull the whole request timeline; this is usually the fastest route to a root cause:

traceway exceptions show $HASH --output json | jq -r '.occurrences[0].distributedTraceId' \
  | xargs -I{} traceway logs query --trace-id {} --output json

Check metrics for systemic causes (spikes lining up with firstSeen suggest saturation rather than a code bug):

traceway metrics query --name system.cpu.utilization --aggregation max --since 24h
traceway metrics query --name <name> --aggregation avg|sum|count|min|max [--tag key=value] [--group-by <tag>]

The CLI also accepts p50|p95|p99, but the server has no quantile aggregation for metric points and silently computes avg for them — never present those as percentiles. Latency percentiles come from traceway endpoints list, computed from raw request durations. There is no metrics list; a bogus name returns an empty series: {} cleanly, so probing names is safe. Host metrics from the Traceway OTel Agent live under system.* names, and OTLP histogram metrics are stored as two series, <name>.avg and <name>.count.

4. Correlate with the code

1. Open the files and lines named in the stack trace and read the failing path.
2. If the issue started at a known time, check what shipped then: git log --since "<firstSeen>" --until "<firstSeen + 1h>" or the deploy history.
3. Form a hypothesis that explains ALL observations (error message, affected endpoint, timing, volume), not just the first stack frame.
4. Propose or implement the fix per the user's instruction.

5. Report and clean up

Summarize: symptom, evidence (exception hashes, log excerpts, metric anomalies), root cause, fix. Include traceway exceptions show <hash> references so the user can verify. After a fix is deployed and verified, archive only when the user asks:

traceway exceptions archive <hash> --yes

Flow: Query

For free-form requests ("what's broken in prod?", "is /api/checkout slow?", "show errors for service X"), use the read commands directly.

Command reference

Command	Purpose
traceway projects {list,use}	List or select the active project
traceway exceptions list	Grouped exceptions; --search, --search-type text|regex, --order-by lastSeen|firstSeen|count, --include-archived
traceway exceptions show <hash>	One group: full stack trace + occurrences
traceway exceptions archive/unarchive <hash>...	Mutating; explicit user request + --yes only
traceway logs query	Logs; --search (--search-type body|attribute), --service, --min-severity <n>, --trace-id
traceway endpoints list	Per-endpoint p50/p95/p99 and counts; --search, --order-by impact|count|p95|lastSeen
traceway metrics query --name <metric>	Time series; --aggregation, --tag, --group-by, --interval-minutes
traceway profiles {list,use}, login, logout, version	Profile and session management

Not implemented yet (do not fabricate flags; point the user at the web UI): traces show, sessions list/show, ai-traces list/show, endpoints show, metrics list/discover. Tasks have no CLI command either; the dashboard's Tasks page covers them.

Recipes

# What's broken right now
traceway exceptions list --since 1h --order-by lastSeen --page-size 10 --output json \
  | jq '.data[]? | {hash: .exceptionHash, count, lastSeen}'

# Did anything NEW break since a deploy at 13:00 UTC
traceway exceptions list --from 2026-06-11T13:00:00Z --to "$(date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ)" \
  --order-by firstSeen --output json \
  | jq '.data[]? | select(.firstSeen >= "2026-06-11T13:00:00Z") | {hash: .exceptionHash, firstSeen, count}'

# Worst endpoint by latency
traceway endpoints list --since 1h --order-by p95 --page-size 1 --output json | jq '.data[0]'

# Errors for one service (exceptions --search is free text, not a service filter; use logs)
traceway logs query --service checkout-api --min-severity 17 --since 1h --output json \
  | jq '.data[]? | {timestamp, body, traceId}'

Empty results (data: null) are not errors: widen the window, re-check the active project (traceway projects list), and if the app was never connected to Traceway, set it up first (the traceway-setup skill).