Visual Debugging Dashboard

The rnix dashboard command launches a multi-pane TUI for visual debugging, combining agent tree view, tracing timeline, context heatmap, process details, intent visualization, and more in a single interface.

Overview

bash

$ rnix dashboard

┌─ Agent Tree ──────────┬─ Tracing Timeline ─────────────────────┐
│                        │                                        │
│ ● PID 1 (running)      │ [0.0s]─────[3.8s]─────[8.0s]──[10.5s]│
│   ├─ ● PID 5 analyst   │  ██████    Open Read Write Close      │
│   ├─ ⏸ PID 6 doc-gen   │       ████████ LLM call (5.2s)        │
│   └─ ○ PID 7 checker   │                    ██ tool call        │
│                        │                                        │
├────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Context Heatmap        │ Details                                │
│ ████ System prompt 27% │ PID 5: code-analyst                   │
│ ███  Skill bodies  19% │ State: running, Step: 4/10            │
│ ████ Dialog        21% │ Tokens: 2,340 / 8,192                 │
│ █████ Tool results 32% │ Skills: code-analysis, security-scan  │
└────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────────────────┘

View Modes

The dashboard supports three view modes for flexible layout control:

Mode	Description	Key
Default	Standard multi-pane layout (tree + timeline + heatmap)	`d`
Expanded	Enlarges the focused pane, shrinks others	`e`
Fullscreen	Shows only the focused pane, fills entire screen	`f`

Cycle through modes with v. The current mode indicator appears in the status bar.

Panes

Agent Tree Pane

Real-time display of all processes with parent-child relationships:

Process state indicators: ● running, ⏸ paused, ◐ zombie, ✕ failed, ○ dead
Token consumption per process
Current execution stage (step N/M)
Expand/collapse subtrees with arrow keys
Shows process UUID alongside PID for unique identification
Subtree pause/resume: select a parent process and toggle pause to affect the entire subtree

Tracing Timeline Pane

Horizontal timeline showing syscall events for the selected agent (or entire Compose workflow):

Default sort: ascending — steps are displayed oldest-first, matching debug reading order. Press o to toggle between ascending and descending.
Three-level detail: press Enter on an event to drill down:
- Level 1: Event category (LLM / Tool / IPC / VFS)
- Level 2: Event parameters and timing
- Level 3: Full request/response payload
Tool call aggregation (toolAggGroup): 3+ consecutive steps with the same tool are folded into a group (▶). Press Enter on the group header to expand; press again to collapse. [/] jump between groups.
Cache hit rate column: each LLM step shows a cache hit % computed with driver-aware semantics (see LLM Providers).
Dynamic context window: the timeline header shows the context window size for the current model.
Stall intensity rendering: stalled steps show visual intensity indicators — color-coded by duration and severity
EXIT severity: uses authoritative ExitCode from the process for exit event coloring
Zoom in/out with +/-
Scroll with left/right arrows
Filter by category: f → LLM / Tool / IPC / VFS
LLM calls highlighted with duration annotation

Context Heatmap Pane

Visualizes the selected agent's context composition:

Color-coded by source: system prompt / skill instructions / tool results / dialog history
Area proportional to token count
Color intensity indicates activity level (active / warm / cold)

Process Detail Panel

Press Enter on a process in the tree to open the detail panel:

Full process metadata (PID, UUID, PPID, state, provider, model)
Skills loaded and allowed devices
Token usage and budget
Current step and execution progress
MCP mount information
Heartbeat status: live, stalled, or paused indicator with stall intensity for degraded processes
Pause duration: for suspended processes, shows elapsed pause time

Stall Intensity Rendering

When a process stalls (stops sending heartbeats but hasn't exceeded timeout), the detail panel renders visual indicators:

Level	Indicator	Meaning
Normal	Green pulse	Heartbeat received within threshold
Stall Warning	Yellow pulse	Heartbeat overdue, process may be stuck on a long operation
Stall Critical	Red pulse	Heartbeat significantly overdue, may require intervention

Stall detection is passive (warn-only) — the dashboard reports status but does not automatically intervene.

Prompt View

Press P (Shift+P) on a selected step in the Timeline to inspect the LLM prompt at that point. The Prompt Viewer has three tabs:

Messages: Conversation history with role indicators (system, user, assistant, tool). For CLI driver processes (Claude CLI, Cursor CLI), the initial user intent is automatically seeded as the first message.
System: Full system prompt content loaded for this process, including agent instructions and skill bodies.
Tools: Details of the tool invoked at this step — name, description, path/parameters, input JSON, result output, error (if any), and execution duration. This information is sourced from the StepRecord, matching what the Timeline displays.

Navigate between tabs with ←/→ or click the tab headers. Step through the timeline with ↑/↓ to compare prompts across steps.

Intent Tree Panel

Press i to toggle the Intent Tree visualization:

Shows the decomposition DAG for declarative intents
Node states: pending, decomposing, await_confirm, executing, completed, failed
Dependency edges between sub-intents
Progress indicators per node

Security Anomaly Panel

Press s to toggle the Immune System anomaly panel (when immune system is enabled):

Active security alerts with severity levels
Behavior baseline deviations
Threat signatures matched
Suspended process list

Distributed Tracing Panel

Press t to toggle the distributed tracing panel:

Span tree visualization for cross-process causal tracing
Trace ID and span hierarchy
Duration and token usage per span
Critical path highlighting

Multi-Agent Evaluation Panel

Press m to toggle the multi-agent evaluation view:

Agent reputation scores
Collaboration topology
Skill synergy data
SLA compliance metrics

Unified Process Tree (with History)

The Agent Tree pane shows all processes — running, completed, failed, and suspended — in a single unified view. There is no separate history mode; dead processes appear alongside active ones.

Columns: PID, state indicator (● running, ⏸ paused, ✓ done, ✕ failed), agent/model, tokens, elapsed, exit code, reason
Elapsed time freezing: when a process is paused (SIGPAUSE), its elapsed timer freezes at PausedAt - CreatedAt instead of continuing to advance. The timer resumes counting when the process is resumed (SIGRESUME).
Summary bar: Running / Done / Failed / Suspended counts, total tokens, average lifetime
Sort modes: by time (newest first, active before dead), by PID, or by state
Historical processes are loaded from persisted data in .rnix/data/steps/<uuid>/proc-info.json
Dead subtrees can be collapsed/expanded for cleaner navigation
Select any process (alive or dead) to view its full observation data:
- Detail panel — PID, UUID, provider/model, state, skills, tokens, heartbeat status
- Timeline — events loaded from events.jsonl on disk
- Heatmap — context snapshot from ctx-profile.json
- Steps/LLM — reasoning steps from steps.jsonl + system prompt from process-meta.json

Resumable Process Listing

Press R (Shift+R) to filter the tree to show only resumable processes — Suspended, Zombie, and Dead processes with persisted data on disk. From this view, press Enter on a process to resume it.

LLM Conversation Viewer

Press L (Shift+L) on a selected process (running or historical) to enter the full-screen LLM conversation viewer:

Step-by-step navigation (h/l or ←/→) through reasoning steps
Each step shows the complete LLM request and response
Role indicators (system, user, assistant, tool) with token counts
For historical (dead) processes, data is loaded from steps.jsonl on disk
Step list panel shows action type, token count, and duration per step
Press Esc to return to the previous view

Debug Mode

Press d to enter debug mode — a dedicated view combining real-time strace events with context profiling:

Strace pane — live syscall event stream (Open, Read, Write, Close) with timing and device annotations
Context profile pane — segment-level context heatmap and budget analysis
Device latency stats — per-device average latency and error counts
For historical processes, events are loaded from events.jsonl on disk

Debug Mode Keybindings

Key	Action
`j`/`k`	Navigate events
`s`	Toggle strace stream
`S` (Shift+S)	Toggle step-mode display
`f`	Filter events by category
`v`	Expand event detail
`Tab`	Switch between strace and context panes
`d` or `Esc`	Exit debug mode

V2.1 Key Bindings

The dashboard follows V2.1 navigation conventions:

Key	Context	Action
`j`/`↓`	Tree, Timeline, History	Move down one visible row (skips collapsed group internals)
`k`/`↑`	Tree, Timeline, History	Move up one visible row
`Enter`	Timeline	Context-aware: on group header → toggle fold; on leaf → drill-in (Level 2 expand)
`[`	Timeline	Dual-mode: no search → jump to previous group; search active → previous match
`]`	Timeline	Dual-mode: no search → jump to next group; search active → next match
`e`	Timeline	Expand all steps — sticky: new steps auto-expand
`E` (Shift+E)	Timeline	Expand errors-only — sticky mode showing only error steps
`C`	Timeline	Collapse all steps

Key	Action
`1`–`8`	Jump directly to pane by number
`Tab`	Cycle focus to next pane
`Shift+Tab`	Cycle focus to previous pane
`z`	Expand focused pane / restore layout

Scrolling (Tree, Timeline, History)

Key	Action
`j`/`↓`	Move down one item
`k`/`↑`	Move up one item
`PgDn`	Page down
`PgUp`	Page up
`g`/`Home`	Jump to top
`G`/`End`	Jump to bottom

Timeline-Specific

Key	Action
`Enter`	Context-aware: fold toggle or drill-in
`v`	Expand step detail (L2)
`V` (Shift+V)	Debug detail (L3)
`e`	Expand all — sticky
`E` (Shift+E)	Expand errors-only — sticky
`C`	Collapse all
`o`	Toggle sort direction (ascending ↑ default / descending ↓)
`[`	Jump to previous group / search match
`]`	Jump to next group / search match
`n`	Jump to next error
`N` (Shift+N)	Jump to previous error
`P` (Shift+P)	Open prompt viewer for selected step
`f`	Enter filter mode

Filter Mode (press `f` in Timeline)

Key	Action
`T`	Toggle tool_call steps
`P`	Toggle plan steps
`A`	Toggle text steps
`C`	Toggle complete steps
`S`	Toggle spawn steps
`R`	Toggle replan steps
`Z`	Toggle specialize steps
`*`	Enable all
`Esc`	Exit filter mode

From rnix top, press d to switch directly to the dashboard, carrying the current process selection.

Interactive Operations

Key	Action
`p`	Pause/resume selected process (toggle SIGPAUSE/SIGRESUME)
`P` (Shift+P)	Pause/resume entire subtree (SignalTree with propagation)
`K` (Shift+K)	Kill selected process
`R` (Shift+R)	Resume suspended process (from persisted state)
`l`	View log for selected process
`r`	Toggle recording for selected process
`a`	Toggle alerts panel
`L` (Shift+L)	Open LLM conversation viewer
`d`	Enter Debug mode
`?`	Show keyboard shortcut help overlay
`q`	Quit dashboard

Selecting an agent in the tree links all panels to show that agent's data.

Step Recording

The dashboard integrates with the Step Recording system. Each reasonStep is recorded as a StepRecord containing:

Step number and timestamp
LLM messages and responses
Token count per step
Tool calls with inputs and results
Action type (tool_call, plan, spawn, complete, etc.)
Step summary

Step records are persisted as NDJSON in .rnix/data/steps/<uuid>/steps.jsonl and can be browsed in the History view.

Offline Replay

Load persisted recording files for offline analysis:

bash

$ rnix dashboard --replay <record-id>

Provides the same multi-pane view with full navigation through historical data, without needing a running daemon.

Process Resume — Pause, resume, and process recovery
Debugging — strace and gdb
Distributed Tracing — Trace IDs and blame analysis
Time-Travel Debugging — Recording and replay
Monitoring — rnix top, heartbeat monitor, and supervisor trees
Security — Immune system configuration

Visual Debugging Dashboard

Overview

View Modes

Panes

Agent Tree Pane

Tracing Timeline Pane

Context Heatmap Pane

Process Detail Panel

Stall Intensity Rendering

Prompt View

Intent Tree Panel

Security Anomaly Panel

Distributed Tracing Panel

Multi-Agent Evaluation Panel

Unified Process Tree (with History)

Resumable Process Listing

LLM Conversation Viewer

Debug Mode

Debug Mode Keybindings

Navigation

V2.1 Key Bindings

Pane Navigation

Scrolling (Tree, Timeline, History)

Timeline-Specific

Filter Mode (press `f` in Timeline)

Top to Dashboard Navigation

Interactive Operations

Step Recording

Offline Replay

Visual Debugging Dashboard ​

Overview ​

View Modes ​

Panes ​

Agent Tree Pane ​

Tracing Timeline Pane ​

Context Heatmap Pane ​

Process Detail Panel ​

Stall Intensity Rendering ​

Prompt View ​

Intent Tree Panel ​

Security Anomaly Panel ​

Distributed Tracing Panel ​

Multi-Agent Evaluation Panel ​

Unified Process Tree (with History) ​

Resumable Process Listing ​

LLM Conversation Viewer ​

Debug Mode ​

Debug Mode Keybindings ​

Navigation ​

V2.1 Key Bindings ​

Pane Navigation ​

Scrolling (Tree, Timeline, History) ​

Timeline-Specific ​

Filter Mode (press f in Timeline) ​

Top to Dashboard Navigation ​

Interactive Operations ​

Step Recording ​

Offline Replay ​

Related Documentation ​

Visual Debugging Dashboard

Overview

View Modes

Panes

Agent Tree Pane

Tracing Timeline Pane

Context Heatmap Pane

Process Detail Panel

Stall Intensity Rendering

Prompt View

Intent Tree Panel

Security Anomaly Panel

Distributed Tracing Panel

Multi-Agent Evaluation Panel

Unified Process Tree (with History)

Resumable Process Listing

LLM Conversation Viewer

Debug Mode

Debug Mode Keybindings

Navigation

V2.1 Key Bindings

Pane Navigation

Scrolling (Tree, Timeline, History)

Timeline-Specific

Filter Mode (press `f` in Timeline)

Top to Dashboard Navigation

Interactive Operations

Step Recording

Offline Replay

Related Documentation