Lightrun

[Lightrun is a live-debugging tool that lets me inject logs, metrics and traces into running code without stopping the service.]

How to use Lightrun

1. Install the agent in the chosen runtime with a single command from the docs.
2. Connect the agent to the Lightrun cloud or on-prem server through the API key shown on first login.
3. Add a log, metric or snapshot straight from the IDE plug-in; no rebuild required.
4. Watch the data stream back in real time inside the console or the web dashboard.
5. Remove or mute the injection once the issue is understood to keep output tidy.

Quick look at Lightrun

Advantages

• Live updates meant I traced a memory spike in production in under five minutes, something that usually takes an entire redeploy cycle.
• IDE integration (I tested IntelliJ and VS Code) feels native; right-clicking a line and choosing “Add Log” became second nature very quickly.
• Role-based permissions helped the team share debugging points safely during an incident, preventing accidental exposure of sensitive values.
• Pricing is straightforward: the free tier covers two agents, which was plenty for our staging pods.
• Support chat responded in under an hour and supplied a working Gradle snippet when my first attempt failed.

Drawbacks

• The agent added roughly 40 MB to our container image, a concern for lean microservices.
• Initial connection behind an outbound-only firewall needed extra whitelisting that isn’t obvious from the quick-start guide.
• Typescript source-map handling lagged by a couple of seconds, making front-end tracing less snappy than Java services.
• No first-party GitLab plug-in yet; I had to fall back to the generic CLI for merge-request links.
• Dark-mode dashboard occasionally renders chart labels in low contrast, so I switched to the light theme while collecting screenshots.

I came away impressed by the speed at which I could probe production behaviour without downtime, yet I’d like lighter agents and tighter front-end support before rolling it out everywhere.