AgentWatch

agentwatch

Your agent swarm crashed at 2am. You have logs from 10 agents and no idea which one started the cascade. AgentWatch tells you.

It tracks heartbeats, links actions across agents, walks backward from any failure to the root cause, and replays the full sequence. Works with any agent framework (CrewAI, AutoGen, LangGraph, PocketFlow, custom). Stores everything in a local SQLite file.

Early stage. Issues and feedback welcome: https://github.com/nicofains1/agentwatch/issues

See it in action

No install needed:

npx @nicofains1/agentwatch demo

This seeds a 5-agent fleet, triggers a cascade failure, and shows you the full trace:

AgentWatch Fleet Dashboard============================================================Agents: 5 total | 3 healthy | 1 degraded | 1 error | 0 offline
Cascade Failure (4 steps, root cause: scheduler/dispatch-batch)============================================================[ROOT] scheduler/dispatch-batch [ok] 15ms       {"assigned_to": "fetcher"}       |[  1 ] fetcher/call-api [error] 30000ms       TIMEOUT after 30000ms       |[  2 ] processor/transform [error] 120ms       Error: input is null - expected array from fetcher       |[FAIL] notifier/send-alert [error] 8ms       Error: no processed data to report

Install

npm install @nicofains1/agentwatch

Requires Node 18+. Uses better-sqlite3 (native bindings, no external database needed).

Quick start

import { AgentWatch } from '@nicofains1/agentwatch';
const aw = new AgentWatch(); // creates agentwatch.db in the current directory
// Report heartbeats from your agentsaw.report('agent-a', 'healthy');aw.report('agent-b', 'healthy');
// Trace an action in agent-aconst traceId = aw.createTraceId();const e1 = aw.trace(traceId, 'agent-a', 'fetch-data',  'url=https://api.example.com', 'rows=150');
// Trace a dependent action in agent-b that failsconst e2 = aw.trace(traceId, 'agent-b', 'process',  JSON.stringify({ rows: 150 }), 'Error: out of memory', {    parentEventId: e1.id,    status: 'error',    durationMs: 4200,  });
// Walk back to the root causeconst chain = aw.correlate(e2.id);console.log(chain?.root_cause);// -> { agent: 'agent-a', action: 'fetch-data', ... }
// Print fleet statusconsole.log(aw.dashboardText());

What it does

Heartbeats - Each agent calls aw.report(name, status) on a schedule. AgentWatch tracks health over time and marks agents as stale or offline based on configurable thresholds.

Cross-agent tracing - Actions are linked by trace ID and optional parent event ID. When agent-c fails because agent-b sent bad data that came from agent-a, the full chain is queryable.

Cascade detection - correlate(failureEventId) walks backward from any failure to the root cause, returning the full chain with timing and output at each step.

Alert de-duplication - The same alert type from the same agent within a time window collapses into one entry with an incrementing count. Severity auto-escalates: info (1x) -> warning (3x) -> critical (10x).

Forensic replay - replay(traceId) returns all cascade chains within a trace. Useful for post-mortem analysis when a single trace touched multiple agents.

OpenTelemetry export - Export traces as OTEL spans (GenAI semantic conventions). Works with Jaeger, Grafana, or any OTEL-compatible backend. Requires optional peer deps.

CLI

npx @nicofains1/agentwatch demo                   # run the demonpx @nicofains1/agentwatch dashboard              # fleet health overviewnpx @nicofains1/agentwatch cascade <event-id>     # trace cascade from a failurenpx @nicofains1/agentwatch failures [agent]       # list recent failuresnpx @nicofains1/agentwatch alerts [agent]         # list active alertsnpx @nicofains1/agentwatch replay <trace-id>      # replay all cascades in a tracenpx @nicofains1/agentwatch mcp                    # start MCP server (stdio)

Set AGENTWATCH_DB to point to your database file. Default: agentwatch.db in the current directory.

MCP server

AgentWatch runs as an MCP server. Add it to your Claude Code or Cursor config:

Claude Code (~/.claude/claude_desktop_config.json or .claude/settings.json):

{  "mcpServers": {    "agentwatch": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["@nicofains1/agentwatch", "mcp"],      "env": {        "AGENTWATCH_DB": "/absolute/path/to/agentwatch.db"      }    }  }}

Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json):

{  "mcpServers": {    "agentwatch": {      "command": "npx",      "args": ["@nicofains1/agentwatch", "mcp"],      "env": {        "AGENTWATCH_DB": "/absolute/path/to/agentwatch.db"      }    }  }}

This exposes 13 tools: agentwatch_dashboard, agentwatch_report_heartbeat, agentwatch_trace, agentwatch_cascade, agentwatch_replay, agentwatch_get_alerts, agentwatch_get_failures, agentwatch_get_trace, agentwatch_fleet_health, agentwatch_create_trace_id, agentwatch_alert, agentwatch_resolve_alert, agentwatch_dashboard_text.

API reference

Constructor

const aw = new AgentWatch({  db_path: 'agentwatch.db',        // SQLite file path  alert_window_minutes: 30,         // de-dup window for alerts  heartbeat_stale_minutes: 30,      // when to mark agents as offline});

Heartbeats

aw.report(agent, status, context?)     // status: 'healthy' | 'degraded' | 'error' | 'offline'aw.getLatestHeartbeat(agent)           // -> Heartbeat | undefinedaw.getFleetHealth()                    // -> AgentHealth[]

Tracing

aw.createTraceId()                                // -> string (UUID)aw.trace(traceId, agent, action, input, output, {  parentEventId?: number,  status?: 'ok' | 'error',                        // default: 'ok'  durationMs?: number,})                                                // -> TraceEventaw.getTraceEvents(traceId)                        // -> TraceEvent[]aw.getRecentFailures(agent?, limit?)              // -> TraceEvent[]

Cascade detection

aw.correlate(failureEventId)    // -> CascadeChain | nullaw.replay(traceId)              // -> CascadeChain[]

Alerts

aw.alert(agent, alertType, message)aw.resolveAlert(alertId)aw.activeAlerts(agent?)         // -> Alert[]

Dashboard

aw.dashboard()      // -> DashboardOutput (structured)aw.dashboardText()  // -> string (formatted for terminal)

OpenTelemetry export

Requires optional peer deps @opentelemetry/api and @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base.

await aw.exportTraceToOtel(traceId, { serviceName: 'my-agents' });await aw.exportRecentToOtel(1); // last 1 hour

Storage

SQLite via better-sqlite3. The database file is created automatically on first use. WAL mode is on for concurrent reads.

Tables: heartbeats, trace_events, alerts.

License

MIT