Rewynd

A zero-config, OTLP-native flight recorder for your backend. It silently records every request — and background job — your backend handles, with the database queries, outbound calls, logs, and exceptions each one caused, correlated per request, during local development. You — or your coding agent — see exactly what happened. No console.log, no re-running.

_{Above: the human view — click the broken request, see its whole story. Below: the same recording, driven by your coding agent.}

Laravel Telescope, reborn for the terminal and language-agnostic — the first backend recorder your coding agent can actually drive. Works with any OpenTelemetry stack (Node, Python, Go, Ruby, Java, …); OpenTelemetry under the hood, zero config on top. Runs entirely on your machine.

v0.2.1 is live. The core, the TUI, the CLI, the agent loop, the MCP server, capture across Node / Python / Go / Ruby / any OpenTelemetry language, distributed traces, background jobs, and the load view all work today — install below. Stars and feedback welcome.

---

Install

# npm (the CLI + the Node capture shim) — the command it installs is `rewynd`:
npm i -D @rewynd/cli

# …Python (the capture shim + `rewynd-run`):
pip install rewynd

# …or grab the binary directly (macOS / Linux):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SrinjoyDev/rewynd/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

# …or with Go:
go install github.com/SrinjoyDev/rewynd/core/cmd/rewynd@latest

Windows binaries are on the releases page, or build from source — see CONTRIBUTING.

The npm package is @rewynd/cli (npm reserves the bare rewynd name); the installed command is still rewynd. Python is pip install rewynd then rewynd-run <your command>.

The problem

Frontend devs have the Chrome DevTools network tab. Backend devs have print. When an endpoint is slow or broken, you sprinkle console.log, re-run the request five times, and squint at which SQL fired. And coding agents have it worse — they write backend code and fly blind, unable to see what it actually did.

rewynd is the network tab for your backend — for humans and agents.

Quick start

# In your Node project (Express, Fastify, …), after installing (see Install above):
# run your normal dev command through rewynd — it auto-starts the recorder:
rewynd run npm run dev

# In another terminal:
rewynd tui                     # the live dashboard — watch requests stream in, click the broken one
rewynd ls                      # or list them; `rewynd show <id>` for one request's full story

$ rewynd show 6928a80f
GET /api/users  ->  200  (15ms)

DETECTIONS
  ! n_plus_one — N+1 query — 10 identical statements

QUERIES (11)
      2ms  SELECT id, name FROM users ORDER BY id
     18ms  SELECT id, title FROM posts WHERE user_id = ?   ×10 (avg 1.8ms)

LOGS (2)
  [info] listing users
  [info] assembled users with posts

For your coding agent — the differentiator

rewynd gives agents a tight, structured clear → trigger → watch → read → fix loop so they can debug a backend autonomously:

rewynd clear                                   # clean slate
curl localhost:3000/api/orders                 # the agent triggers the endpoint
rewynd watch --status 5xx --timeout 10s --json # blocks until it lands, prints the full trace
rewynd diagnose <id>                           # "what's wrong here" in one line

watch returns the failing SQL with its params, the exception and stack, and any detected N+1 — as JSON the agent reads directly.

Or skip the CLI: rewynd ships an MCP server so agents introspect the backend natively. Drop this into your Claude Code / Cursor MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "rewynd": { "command": "rewynd", "args": ["mcp"] }
  }
}

Tools: get_stats, get_load_stats, list_requests, get_request, wait_for_request, diagnose, get_last_error, clear. The server also sends the whole debugging protocol as MCP instructions on connect, so the agent knows when and how to use them.

Ready-made integrations for Claude Code (skill + MCP), Cursor (rules + MCP), Windsurf, OpenCode, Codex, Cline, and Devin live in integrations/ — drop the right file into your project and any agent learns the clear → trigger → watch → read → fix loop.

Does it actually help an agent? — a benchmark

We measured it. Four realistic backend bugs; the same coding agent and the same prompt in both arms — the only difference is whether it can read the rewynd trace.

The agent found the root cause in 4/4 bugs with rewynd vs 3/4 without — and, more telling, was correct and confident 4/4 vs 2/4. The miss was a silently-failing background job: with only the source and the logs the agent confidently invented the wrong cause (a job-type mismatch); with the recorded trace it read the actual SMTPConnectError and got it right. Without ground truth, agents don't just fail — they hallucinate a fix. rewynd replaces the guess with what actually happened.

It's fully reproducible — the tasks, the OTLP seeder, and the grader live in bench/agent-eval/. Bring your own agent and add your own bugs.

What it captures, correlated per flow

HTTP requests	method, path, status, timing
Background jobs	queue consumers, workers, cron — recorded as first-class flows, ok/fail (example)
DB queries	SQL + params + duration, with N+1 detection
Outbound calls	method, URL, status, duration
Logs	console / pino / winston, stamped with the flow's trace
Exceptions	type, message, stack

Commands

Command	What it does
rewynd run <cmd>	Run your dev command with recording on (auto-starts the core)
rewynd ls	List requests (--status 5xx, --slow, --has-error, --path, --json)
rewynd show <id>	Full correlated trace for one request (--json)
rewynd export <id>	Write the trace as a self-contained HTML file (-o trace.html) — share it, attach it to a PR or CI
rewynd stats	Load summary: throughput, latency p50/p95/p99, error rate, by endpoint. --save <name> then --baseline <name> to see if a fix helped (--json)
rewynd watch	Block until a matching request is recorded, then print it (--json)
rewynd tail	Stream requests as they arrive
rewynd diagnose <id>	Summarize what's wrong (N+1, exceptions, slow queries)
rewynd last-error	The most recent 5xx, in full
rewynd clear	Wipe the buffer
rewynd status	Is the core running, how many requests buffered

Privacy — it's all local

No cloud, no account, no telemetry on you. The core binds 127.0.0.1 and never makes an outbound connection. A hard prod guard refuses to start under NODE_ENV=production. Secrets are redacted; bodies are size-capped. Your request data never leaves your machine.

How it works

your app ─(stock OpenTelemetry, configured by the shim)→ OTLP ─→ rewynd core ─→ SQLite
                                            (HTTP :4318 · gRPC :4317)  │
                                              TUI · CLI · MCP read the same recording

The shim stands on OpenTelemetry's auto-instrumentation (you never see OTel config). The Go core is a single static binary: OTLP receiver (HTTP and gRPC) → correlation → detections → embedded SQLite, with the TUI, CLI, and MCP as thin clients over it. Any OTel-emitting service connects — gRPC is what most SDKs default to.

It scales with your project. Because correlation keys on the OpenTelemetry trace, this is not a single-app toy: run a whole polyglot stack locally — several Node and Python services, a worker, a gateway — all pointed at the one core. A request that fans out across services is stitched back into one trace: the entry service is the root, and every query, outbound call, and log is tagged with the service it ran in, so you see the whole distributed flow in one view (runnable example). The store is a WAL'd ring buffer that keeps the most recent requests (1000 by default); set REWYND_MAX_REQUESTS higher for a long session or a busy app that wants to leave nothing behind.

Supported stacks

Node.js — Express, Fastify, NestJS (anything on Node's http); pg, mysql2, Drizzle, Sequelize, Knex; fetch / axios; console, pino, winston. One command: rewynd run <your dev command>.

Python — FastAPI, Flask, Django; psycopg2, SQLAlchemy; requests, httpx; stdlib logging. One command: pip install rewynd && rewynd-run <your command>.

Go — go get github.com/SrinjoyDev/rewynd/sdk/go, then rewynd.Start(ctx) at boot and standard OpenTelemetry instrumentation (otelhttp, otelsql). Go has no runtime auto-instrumentation, so it's minimal setup rather than zero — but it feeds the same core. See sdk/go and examples/go-service.

Any other language — Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Rust, … — works through its standard OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation. rewynd run -- <your command> sets the OTLP environment variables, so e.g. rewynd run -- java -javaagent:opentelemetry-javaagent.jar -jar app.jar records a JVM app with no code change. See docs/languages.md.

They all feed the same core over OTLP, so the TUI, CLI, and MCP work identically across languages — one local recorder for every backend, human or agent.

Roadmap

• Zero-config capture + per-request correlation (Node, ESM/tsx)
• Go core: OTLP receiver, SQLite store, N+1 detection
• CLI + the agent watch loop, rewynd run launcher
• MCP server (rewynd mcp) + mcp.json quickstart
• The live TUI (request list + waterfall)
• N+1, slow-query, and slow-request detection
• Header capture + redaction; outbound HTTP
• Python shim (FastAPI/Flask/Django) over the same core — the multi-language unlock
• Request/response body capture (redacted, size-capped)
• v0.2.1 released: cross-platform binaries + curl | sh installer + go install
• Agent-native: MCP instructions + get_stats; drop-in integrations for Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, OpenCode, Codex, Cline, Devin
• TUI control panel: live search, slow filter, scrollable enriched detail
• OTLP/gRPC intake (:4317) alongside HTTP — most SDKs default to gRPC
• Distributed traces: multi-service stitching with per-service attribution
• Background jobs / queue consumers recorded as first-class flows (not just HTTP)
• Load view: rewynd stats + get_load_stats + TUI S panel (throughput, p50/p95/p99, error rate, by endpoint)
• Go SDK (sdk/go) — rewynd.Start(ctx) + standard OTel instrumentation
• Any OTel language via rewynd run (Java/.NET/Ruby/PHP); regression diff (stats --save/--baseline)
• npm (@rewynd/cli) and PyPI (rewynd) published — install paths all live
• Shareable trace export: rewynd export <id> → a self-contained HTML page for PRs/CI
• Agent-value benchmark: reproducible eval showing agents debug better with the trace (bench/agent-eval)
• Zero-config shims that bundle the OTel agent for more languages (Ruby gem, Java helper)

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. The repo is a pnpm + Go monorepo: core/ (the Go core + CLI/TUI/MCP), packages/ (the Node shim + npm wrapper + Python shim), sdk/go/ (the Go SDK), and examples/ (express-postgres, distributed, jobs, go-service, ruby-service).

License

MIT