What is OpenBug CLI?

OpenBug CLI is a revolutionary, intelligent command-line interface designed to transform how developers debug complex applications. It integrates powerful Artificial Intelligence directly into your terminal workflow, allowing you to run commands, stream logs, and receive instant, context-aware insights without ever leaving your shell environment. By capturing runtime logs and accessing your local codebase, OpenBug creates a holistic view of your running services, enabling AI to diagnose issues with unprecedented accuracy.

This tool eliminates the tedious context-switching that plagues modern debugging sessions—the constant jumping between terminal windows, log files, and code editors. Instead, OpenBug centralizes the entire debugging loop. It is built for developers working in multi-service environments, offering the capability to trace issues across interconnected microservices seamlessly, making complex system debugging faster and significantly less frustrating.

Key Features

• Real-time AI Debugging: Get immediate, AI-powered answers to your debugging questions based on live application logs and current code state.
• Automatic Log Capture: Seamlessly captures and streams logs from running processes (e.g., npm run dev, docker-compose up) directly to the AI assistant.
• Natural Language Code Search: Ask questions about your codebase in plain English (e.g., "Where is the payment webhook handled?") and receive answers based on actual code snippets, not generic internet searches.
• Cross-Service Tracing: Debug distributed systems by connecting multiple services to a single cluster; the AI can trace errors across service boundaries.
• Local Codebase Access (Privacy Focused): The AI analyzes your code locally. Only specific, queried code snippets are sent to the server, ensuring high privacy standards.
• Interactive Terminal Interface: All interaction, logging, and querying occur within a unified, interactive terminal experience.
• Self-Hosting Capability: Provides instructions and configuration options for users who wish to run their own OpenBug AI server for maximum control.

How to Use OpenBug CLI

Getting started with OpenBug CLI is straightforward, requiring installation and a quick setup of the AI connection:

1. Installation: Install the CLI globally using npm:

npm install -g @openbug/cli

2.  **Initial Setup:** Run the `debug` command for the first time. You will be prompted to log in via the OpenBug web application and paste your unique API key into the terminal to authenticate your session.
3.  **Start Debugging Session:** In one terminal window, start the AI assistant:
    ```bash
debug

This opens the interactive AI interface.

4. Run Your Application: In a second terminal window, run your service command prefixed with debug: ```bash debug npm run dev

OR

debug python app.py

    Your application runs normally, but its logs are streamed securely to the AI assistant running in the first terminal.
5.  **Query the AI:** Ask specific questions in the AI terminal, such as, "Why did the database connection fail on startup?" The AI correlates the logs with your codebase context to provide an actionable answer.

## Use Cases

1.  **Debugging Microservice Failures:** When an API gateway reports an error originating from a downstream service, OpenBug can simultaneously monitor logs from both services and trace the request flow to pinpoint the exact line of code causing the failure across the boundary.
2.  **Onboarding to Unfamiliar Codebases:** New team members can quickly understand complex application logic by asking natural language questions about functionality (e.g., "Show me the code path for user registration") instead of manually navigating hundreds of files.
3.  **Diagnosing Configuration Drift:** Quickly identify issues where environment variables or configuration files differ between staging and production by asking the AI to compare runtime settings against the codebase configuration.
4.  **Troubleshooting Race Conditions:** By correlating timestamps across multiple concurrent log streams, developers can ask the AI to analyze timing-sensitive interactions and identify potential race conditions that are difficult to spot manually.
5.  **CI/CD Pipeline Debugging:** Integrate the CLI into pre-deployment checks to run automated tests and immediately query the AI about any failures, accelerating the feedback loop before deployment.

## FAQ

**Q: Is my proprietary source code uploaded to the OpenBug servers?**
A: No. OpenBug prioritizes privacy. Your codebase is accessed locally by the CLI agent. Only specific, necessary code snippets required to answer a direct query are sent to the AI server, and this is controlled by your usage.

**Q: Can OpenBug debug applications running inside Docker or Kubernetes?**
A: Yes, as long as the CLI can execute the service command (e.g., `docker-compose up`) and capture the resulting stdout/stderr streams, OpenBug can monitor and debug those logs.

**Q: What kind of AI models does OpenBug utilize?**
A: The underlying technology leverages advanced Large Language Models (LLMs), often requiring the user to provide their own OpenAI API key for the server component, ensuring flexibility and control over the AI backend.

**Q: What if I want to run the AI server myself instead of using the public service?**
A: OpenBug supports self-hosting. You can clone the server repository, configure it with your preferred API key, and point the CLI to your local WebSocket URL (e.g., `export WEB_SOCKET_URL=ws://localhost:4466/v2/ws`).

**Q: Is OpenBug CLI only for Node.js or JavaScript projects?**
A: The CLI is language-agnostic regarding log capture. It captures standard output streams. However, its ability to search the codebase is optimized for common project structures, making it highly effective for any language whose runtime logs can be streamed to the terminal.