---
title: Monitoring
description: Log entries, traces, errors, source maps and one scrubbing policy per environment — the signals a project keeps about itself.
type: tutorial
product: monitoring
summary: What the product holds, and how a log, a span and an error fit together
updated: 2026-09-28
order: 0
---
Monitoring holds what a project says about itself: the log entries it emits,
the traces its work belongs to, the errors it raises, the source maps that turn
a minified stack back into your own code, and the one policy that decides what
is removed before any of it is stored.
Everything is addressed under a project environment. The environment is not
decoration: it is what a key is scoped to, what a query is bounded by, and what
the scrubbing policy belongs to.
## Log entries
A [Log Entry](/docs/api/log_entries) is one typed, bounded log record of a
project environment, correlated to a trace. `log_time`, `severity` and `body`
are required, and `severity` is one of `trace`, `debug`, `info`, `warn`,
`error` and `fatal`. `service_name` says which service emitted it,
`attributes` carries typed values, and `trace_id` with `span_id` places the
record on a trace.
Entries are immutable, and ingest is idempotent per batch: the same
`Idempotency-Key` and digest replays the same batch, while a different digest
under the same key conflicts. A retry is therefore safe to send, and a changed
body under the same key is refused rather than written twice.
## Traces
A [Trace](/docs/api/traces) is every span sharing one W3C trace id in a
project environment, and the id is `t` followed by the 32-hex trace id. A span
carries its `trace_id`, `span_id`, `span_name`, `service_name`, `start_time`
and `end_time`; `kind` is one of `internal`, `server`, `client`, `producer` and
`consumer`, and `parent_span_id` is empty on a root span.
The trace itself is derived from its spans: the root span's name and service,
the earliest start, the latest end, and whether any span has an error status. A
query answers with those summaries and no spans; reading one trace answers with
every span in start order.
## Errors
An [Error Group](/docs/api/error_groups) is the deterministic grouping of error
occurrences by fingerprint, and an [Error Event](/docs/api/error_events) is one
immutable error occurrence, with breadcrumbs and correlation.
Release is an attribute of each occurrence and never part of the group key, so
one bug stays one group across releases. A group's `state` — `unresolved`,
`acknowledged` or `resolved` — is the whole of its triage. [Errors](/docs/monitoring/errors)
covers grouping, capture and the three triage calls.
## Source maps
A [Source Map](/docs/api/source_maps) is one uploaded JavaScript source map of
one release of a project environment. Captured stack frames of that release
whose file matches `file_url` are mapped back to the original source before
grouping, which is what makes a group a bug in your code rather than a
minified build. [Source maps](/docs/monitoring/source-maps) covers the upload
and what it changes.
## Scrubbing
Every environment has one [Scrubbing Policy](/docs/api/scrubbing_policies):
what is removed from every captured error before it is stored. The default
rules always apply — a field named like a password, a token or a card is
replaced, and so is anything that looks like a card number, a bearer token, a
JWT or a Sylphx secret key. The environment's policy adds to the defaults; it
cannot remove them. [Scrubbing](/docs/monitoring/scrubbing) states the rules in
full.
## Names
A resource's name is its path, and the same path works in the API, the CLI and
the console.
## Scopes
`observability:read` covers every read. `observability:ingest` covers what comes
in from a running system: batches of log entries, batches of spans, and captured
errors. `observability:write` covers what changes after ingest — acknowledging,
resolving or reopening a group, uploading a source map, and writing the
scrubbing policy.
A browser captures errors with a publishable key that holds
`observability:ingest`: the call allows CORS and is rate-limited per
environment. [Keys and scopes](/docs/platform/keys-and-scopes) has what a
publishable key may hold and what it may not.