What is Sidekick?

Sidekick is a live application debugger that lets you troubleshoot your applications while they keep on running.

Add dynamic logs and put non-breaking breakpoints in your running application without the need of stopping & redeploying.

Sidekick Open Source is here to allow self-hosting and make live debugging more accessible. Built for everyone who needs extra information from their running applications.

Sidekick Actions:

Sidekick has two major actions; Tracepoints & Logpoints.

• A tracepoint is a non-breaking remote breakpoint. In short, it takes a snapshot of the variables when the code hits that line.
• Logpoints open the way for dynamic(on-demand) logging to Sidekick users. Replacing traditional logging with dynamic logging has the potential to lower stage sizes, costs, and time for log searching while adding the ability to add new logpoints without editing the source code, redeploying, or restarting the application.

Supported runtimes: Java, Python, Node.js

To learn more about Sidekick features and capabilities, see our web page.

Sidekick Node.js Agent

Sidekick Node.js agent allows you to inject tracepoints (non-breaking breakpoints) and logpoints dynamically to capture call stack snapshots (with variables) and add log messages on the fly without code modification, re-build and re-deploy. So it helps you, your team, and your organization to reduce MTTR (Minimum Time to Repair/Resolve).

To achieve this, Sidekick Node.js agent makes use of V8's inspector API.

The advantages of Sidekick over classical APM solutions is that, Sidekick

• can debug and trace any location (your code base or 3rd party dependency) in your application, not just the external (DB, API, etc ...) calls like APM solutions
• has zero overhead when you don't have any tracepoint or logpoint but APMs have always
• doesn't produce too much garbage data because it collects data only at the certain points you specified as long as that point (tracepoint/logpoint) is active

Usage

npm install @runsidekick/sidekick-agent-nodejs

Docs

There are two way to integrate Sidekick agent to your application.

Integrate Agent with Environment Variable

You can easily integrate Sidekick using below environment variables.

• set SIDEKICK_APIKEY environment variable with your Sidekick api key.
• set NODE_OPTIONS environment variable with '-r @runsidekick/sidekick-agent-nodejs/dist/bootstrap'

Integrate Agent with Code

You can easily integrate Sidekick adding below code block to top of your project.

JS example

const SidekickDebugger = require('@runsidekick/sidekick-agent-nodejs');

SidekickDebugger.start({ 
    apiKey: '<Your_Api_Key>'
});

...

TS example

import * as SidekickDebugger from '@runsidekick/sidekick-agent-nodejs';

SidekickDebugger.start({ 
    apiKey: '<Your_Api_Key>'
});

...

Configs

| Config | Requirement | Environment Variable | Default | --- | --- | --- | --- | apiKey | Required | SIDEKICK_APIKEY | None | logLevel | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_LOG_LEVEL | info | disable | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_DISABLE | false | brokerHost | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_BROKER_HOST | Sidekick broker address | brokerPort | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_BROKER_PORT | Sidekick broker port | brokerClient | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_BROKER_CLIENT | Logged in user | applicationId | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_APPLICATION_ID | Generated by agent | applicationName | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_APPLICATION_NAME | Empty string | applicationInstanceId | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_APPLICATION_INSTANCE_ID | Generated by agent | applicationVersion | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_APPLICATION_VERSION | Empty string | applicationStage | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_APPLICATION_STAGE | Empty string | applicationTag | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_APPLICATION_TAG | None | maxFrames | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_MAX_FRAMES | 20 | maxExpandFrames | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_MAX_EXPAND_FRAMES | 1 | maxProperties | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_MAX_PROPERTIES | 10 | maxParseDepth | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_MAX_PARSE_DEPTH | 3 | propertyAccessClassification | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_PROPERTY_ACCESS_CLASSIFICATION | ENUMERABLE-OWN | scriptPrefix | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_SCRIPT_PREFIX | None | rejectOnStartup | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_REJECT_ON_STARTUP | false | captureFrameDataReductionCallback | Optional | | None | logMessageDataReductionCallback | Optional | | None | errorCollectionEnable | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_ERROR_COLLECTION_ENABLE | false | errorCollectionEnableCaptureFrame | Optional | SIDEKICK_AGENT_ERROR_COLLECTION_CAPTURE_FRAME | false

Valid Config Values

• propertyAccessClassification (SIDEKICK_AGENT_PROPERTY_ACCESS_CLASSIFICATION) configuration can take one of following values:
  • ENUMERABLE-OWN (default value)
  • ENUMERABLE-OWN-AND-ENUMERABLE-PARENT
  • ENUMERABLE-OWN-AND-NON-ENUMERABLE-OWN
  • ENUMERABLE-OWN-AND-NON-ENUMERABLE-OWN-ENUMERABLE-PARENT

Build

• npm run clean-build:all

Official Sidekick Agents

• Java
• Node.js
• Python

Resources:

• Documentation
• Community
• Discord
• Contributing
• Sidekick Main Repository

Questions? Problems? Suggestions?

To report a bug or request a feature, create a GitHub Issue. Please ensure someone else has not created an issue for the same topic.

Contact

Reach out on the Discord. A fellow community member or Sidekick engineer will be happy to help you out.