Telemetry Inspect

telemetry-inspect

One-shot health check for OrchestKit's telemetry pipeline. Reports writer activity, file sizes, schema lock coverage, orphan files, and growth warnings. Use when verifying the pipeline is flowing correctly or debugging a missing writer.

When to use

• Before or after a risky hook refactor, to prove telemetry still writes as expected
• Weekly health check on a long-running project
• When analytics output looks suspicious — inspect the underlying data first
• When adding a new telemetry file and wanting to confirm it's picked up
• Auditing which files are schema-locked vs. drift-vulnerable

What it checks

1. Writer activity — for each registered telemetry file, recent write count (from mtime scan) and last-write delta
2. File health — size (warn at 256 KB, critical at 1 MB), line count, mtime
3. Schema lock status — which files have validators in lib/telemetry-schemas.ts
4. Orphan detection — files on disk under .claude/{telemetry,logs,state,feedback}/ that aren't in the registry (possible stale writer or new file needing schema), plus inventory rows whose writer hook no longer exists in src/hooks/src/ (dead writer → orphan)
5. Growth trend — bytes per hour since session start (fire alert if > 100 KB/hr)
6. Coordination layer (M168) — live counts from sessions.db (running sessions, held locks, pending worktree links, skill invocations) plus write throughput from coordination-metrics.jsonl
7. Runtime fired-census — which hooks actually fired, from the per-invocation records run-hook.mjs writes to ~/.claude/analytics/hook-timing.jsonl. Checks 1–4 answer "is the file being written?"; this answers "is the writer running at all?" — the upstream question. A hook can be wired and reachable (the closure gate proves that statically) and still never fire: #2886 shipped exactly that with 12 green tests.

Usage

telemetry-inspect
telemetry-inspect --session sess-abc123
telemetry-inspect --json

Default mode: terminal-friendly ASCII report. --json emits a structured result suitable for piping into another tool or uploading.

Output shape (ASCII mode)

Telemetry Health — 2026-07-09 11:50
────────────────────────────────────

Schema-locked files (7)
  .claude/telemetry/pre-compact-decisions.jsonl  ◆ 3 lines  1.1 KB  ✓ healthy
  .claude/telemetry/image-responses.jsonl        ◆ 0 lines  —       ✗ no writes
  .claude/logs/decisions.jsonl                   ◆ 0 lines  —       ✗ no writes
  .claude/logs/subagent-spawns.jsonl             ◆ 6 lines  3 KB    ✓ healthy
  .claude/state/edit-history.jsonl               ◆ 94 lines 412 KB  ⚠ rotate
  .claude/state/ork-metrics-*.json               ◆ (N/A)    2.1 KB  ✓ healthy
  .claude/logs/skill-channels.jsonl              ◆ 12 lines 4 KB    ✓ healthy

Unlocked telemetry files (14)
  .claude/feedback/changelog-decisions.json      ○ 4 KB    ✗ no schema
  .claude/feedback/learned-patterns.json         ○ 8 KB    ✗ no schema
  (...14 more...)

Orphan files (1)
  .claude/feedback/skill-usage.json  — delisted, writer unwired since #959

Runtime fired-census (7d window)
  ALIVE  59   IDLE 3   NEVER 83   UNOBSERVABLE 54
  tree 8.75.0 · installed 8.73.0/8.74.0  <-- SKEW: NEVER is not a verdict
  never-fired writers (the ones that matter here):
    posttool/dirty-file-tracker   [PostToolUse]   0 fires, ever

Summary
  Pipeline health:  GREEN  (21/21 expected writers active)
  Schema coverage:  7/21 (33%)
  Largest file:     edit-history.jsonl (412 KB)
  Hotspot:          edit-history.jsonl  +40 KB/hr

Implementation plan (for an agent/LLM running this skill)

1. List known files — read lib/telemetry-schemas.ts's SCHEMA_LOCKED inventory for the 7 locked paths. Extend with the unlocked paths listed in the skill-local references/telemetry-inventory.md.
2. Cross-check inventory writers against the registry closure — never trust the inventory blindly:
   • Run node src/hooks/scripts/validate-registry.mjs (from the OrchestKit repo root; skip gracefully if not in the OrchestKit repo) and confirm it passes.
   • For every writer named in the inventory (e.g. posttool/metrics-bridge), verify the source file exists: test -f src/hooks/src/<writer>.ts.
   • Any inventory writer that is NOT a live src/hooks/src/ file is ORPHANED — report 🔴, never "expected-but-empty". Its file(s) on disk are orphans regardless of freshness, and the inventory row is stale (flag it for removal).
3. For each file:
   • Use Glob to resolve .claude/state/ork-metrics-*.json pattern → may be multiple
   • Use Read with limit: 10 to see shape and Bash wc -l for line count
   • Use Bash stat for mtime + size
4. Classify health:
   • size > 1 MB → critical
   • size > 256 KB → warn
   • mtime > 7 days → "no recent writes"
   • line count 0 → "no writes"
5. Orphan scan — Bash find .claude/{telemetry,logs,state,feedback} -type f cross-check against registered paths. Any on-disk files not in inventory → orphan. Merge in dead-writer orphans from step 2.
6. Runtime fired-census — steps 1–5 ask "is the file being written?". This asks the upstream question: "does the writer hook run at all?"
   • Run node src/hooks/scripts/fired-census.mjs --json (OrchestKit repo only; skip gracefully elsewhere — it exits 0 and prints an absent-census notice if ~/.claude/analytics/hook-timing.jsonl doesn't exist yet).
   • Report the class counts (totals), and the versions.skewed line verbatim when true — the census is written by the INSTALLED plugin across ALL projects, while the closure comes from this tree, so NEVER on a hook newer than the installed build is expected, not a finding.
   • Cross-reference: for every inventory writer from step 2 that is a live file, look up its census row. A writer that is ALIVE but whose file has 0 lines is a real defect (it runs and produces nothing). A writer that is NEVER is the #2886 class — surface it, but as advisory.
   • Never call a hook dead from NEVER alone. UNOBSERVABLE rows (dispatcher children) cannot appear by construction, and rare events (WorktreeRemove, PreCompact) look identical to a broken guard from here. Read the guard before concluding.
7. Render report — ASCII table by default, JSON if --json argument passed.

Core logic is deterministic + read-only. Do NOT write to any telemetry file — this skill is an observer.