sentinel docs

Local-First Docs

Sentinel Documentation

Public documentation for installing Sentinel, ingesting logs, using Docker and traces, and navigating the local UI.

Sentinel is a local-first error tracker for development logs. It reads the logs you already have, groups recurring failures into issues, stores them locally in SQLite, and gives you a local UI to inspect what keeps coming back.

Start here Install Sentinel, run sentinel dev, sentinel docker, or sentinel run -- <command>, then open sentinel ui when you want to inspect grouped issues and correlated spans.

What these docs cover

  • install and upgrades across macOS, Linux, and Windows
  • quick start flows for Docker, the supervised dev stack, wrapped commands, stdin, and log files
  • sentinel dev: a .sentinel.yml-driven supervisor with a terminal UI for your local stack
  • Docker auto-discovery and container selection behavior
  • the current CLI surface, including traces, projects, status actions, and update flow
  • the current UI surface, including Issues, Traces, Settings, Deep Analysis, and keyboard shortcuts
  • OTLP/HTTP trace ingestion and the sentinel.session_id correlation contract

Documentation map

Core workflow

For most local development setups, pick one of these as your entry point:

  1. Install Sentinel
  2. Pick the right ingestion mode:
    • sentinel dev if you have (or want) a .sentinel.yml for your local stack
    • sentinel docker if you run your stack with Docker or Compose
    • sentinel run -- <command> to wrap a single process you start yourself
    • sentinel stdin or sentinel watch <glob> if logs already exist somewhere
  3. Open sentinel ui to inspect grouped issues, traces, and triage reports
  4. Reach for the UI reference and CLI reference when you want exact behavior
Install Install Get Sentinel running in one command and understand how upgrades work after the initial install. Quick Start Quick Start Start triaging local failures in a few minutes. Pick the ingestion path that matches how you run your stack today. Docker Docker Use Sentinel directly against Docker logs and understand exactly what it is or is not watching. Dev Dev Run a supervised local stack with sentinel dev: a config file, a terminal UI, and per-service start, stop, restart, and copy-log controls. Commands Commands Workflow-oriented guide to the main Sentinel commands, with links to the full CLI reference. Projects Projects How Sentinel scopes issues, traces, and analysis by project, and how the UI and CLI behave when more than one project shares a database. UI UI Overview of the local Sentinel UI: issues, traces, settings, detail pages, and keyboard-first navigation. OpenTelemetry OpenTelemetry How Sentinel ingests local OTLP/HTTP traces, what metadata it stores, and how trace correlation works. Troubleshooting Troubleshooting Common Sentinel failures and how to fix them. Group: dev config, Docker, OTLP, LLM/model, database, UI, and live reload. Reference Reference Command and UI reference for the current public Sentinel surface.