@smplcty/logging

A tiny zero-dependency helper that adds LOG_LEVEL control to Node's built-in console.

No new logger, no new API — just import it once and console.error / console.warn / console.info / console.debug start respecting the LOG_LEVEL environment variable.

import '@smplcty/logging';

console.error('always shown');
console.warn('shown when LOG_LEVEL is warn or higher');
console.info('shown when LOG_LEVEL is info or higher');
console.debug('shown only when LOG_LEVEL=debug');

Install

pnpm add @smplcty/logging

Zero runtime dependencies. Requires Node 20+.

How it works

The package mutates globalThis.console once, at module load, replacing the methods below the configured level with no-op functions. After the import statement runs, your existing console.* calls behave like a poor man's level-filtered logger — without rewriting any call sites.

| LOG_LEVEL | error | warn | info | debug | |---|---|---|---|---| | error (default) | ✓ | × | × | × | | warn | ✓ | ✓ | × | × | | info | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | × | | debug | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |

The level is read from process.env.LOG_LEVEL once, at module load. Unset or invalid values fall back to error.

When to use this — and when not to

Use this when you have an existing codebase with hundreds of console.debug(...) / console.info(...) calls and you want to add LOG_LEVEL filtering without rewriting them.

Use pino instead when you want any of:

• Structured JSON output (CloudWatch Insights queries, Datadog/Sentry ingestion)
• Per-call bindings or child loggers
• PII / secret redaction
• Multiple destinations
• Async writes for backpressure
• Performance at high throughput

This package does ~10 lines of work and ships ~1 KB. It's not a logger, it's a level filter on the global console. For anything beyond "shut up unless LOG_LEVEL=debug," reach for pino — its Logger shape is structurally compatible with the optional logger parameters on every @smplcty/* library.

Migrating to a real logger

When you outgrow this:

// before
import '@smplcty/logging';
console.debug('event', event);

// after
import pino from 'pino';
const log = pino({
  level: process.env.LOG_LEVEL ?? 'error',
  redact: ['headers.authorization', 'body.code'], // PII you used to leak via console.debug
});
log.debug({ event }, 'event received');

v1.3.0 vs. v1.2.x

v1.3.0 is a TypeScript port of v1.2.x. No runtime behavior changes. Same side-effect import, same console mutation, same LOG_LEVEL semantics, same default. Differences:

• Source is now TypeScript (src/index.ts) compiled to dist/index.js + dist/index.d.ts
• Type declarations ship in the package
• Build pipeline uses tsc
• Tests use vitest instead of node --test
• CI workflow now runs lint, typecheck, gitleaks, tests, and a non-blocking pnpm outdated check on every PR and push to main
• Publish workflow runs gitleaks before npm publish for defense in depth

If you're consuming @smplcty/logging in v1.2.x with import '@smplcty/logging';, no changes are needed to upgrade to v1.3.0.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.