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Validate data with developer traces

Use this guide to verify where a dashboard number came from. Every headline number is a rollup; developer traces are the drill-down that walks all the way to the underlying commits, sessions, and analysis records. Use it whenever someone asks "where did this number come from?" or "why does this look off?"

  • Deployment: SaaS, On-premises
  • Role: Owner, Admin

Developer traces are restricted to organization Owners and Admins — see Roles reference. They work whether or not an AI analysis provider is connected.

The three levels​

Developer traces is three stacked views. You drill down through them, following the breadcrumb Home > Developer Traces > developer > branch:

  1. Recent activity: the fleet-wide entry view, listing active developers with per-developer session, commit, and branch counts and a status pill. Start here to confirm the person and period.
  2. A developer trace: one person's work-branch cards and runtime sessions, with capture-coverage totals so you can see how complete the underlying capture is.
  3. A work branch: the leaf. The full forensic breakdown of a single branch.

1. Confirm the person and period​

Developer Traces roster page

Developer Traces, showing the System Signals panel and the Active Developers roster.

Open developer traces from the left sidebar. It opens on Recent activity. Check the System Signals panel at the top, then find the developer in the Active Developers roster and confirm their session, commit, and branch counts look right for the period.

2. Open the developer, then the branch​

Single developer trace page

A developer's trace: the Developer Activity Stream summary above their work-branch cards.

Select Trace on the developer's row to see their work-branch cards and runtime sessions, then select Detail on the branch whose number you are checking.

Work branch trace page

A work branch trace, with the Pipeline Throughput bar and Analysis Scores below the branch header.

The work branch view is where numbers become auditable. It shows the branch header (name, repo, committer, commit and line counts, whether and when it was pushed and merged). It also shows a proportional pipeline bar from commits to work segments to analysis facts, the analysis-score tiles the value points are built from, per-session retained versus abandoned contributions, per-commit detail, and per-file retention.

Pipeline Throughput bar

The Pipeline Throughput bar, proportional across commits, work segments, and analysis facts.

The deepest layer, Raw Troubleshooting Data, exposes the runtime sessions, work segments, and analysis facts directly.

Raw Troubleshooting Data tabs

Raw Troubleshooting Data, with tabs for runtime sessions, work segments, and facts.

3. Reconcile against the headline number​

Walk the commits, sessions, and analysis facts against the number you started from. If they add up, the rollup is sound. Each stage of the pipeline is narrower than the last, which is why developer traces is where you see exactly where data thins out.

How to read a number that looks wrong​

The product follows a strict honesty convention, which is what makes this validation reliable:

  • 0 means a measured zero. A blank means not captured. An empty list means measured, none found. A blank value is telling you data is missing, not that the value is zero.
  • Check data quality first. The System Signals panel on Recent activity — pipeline lag, stalled sessions, clock skew — explains why a number might be thin before you go hunting for a bug.
  • Analysis-gated tiles show unavailable, not zero, when the AI review has not run yet. A missing score is a coverage gate, not an error.
  • Unattributed work is left unattributed, not guessed. Kept lines that carry no human or AI attribution are left out of the split rather than guessed, which can legitimately make credited totals look smaller than a raw line count.

Troubleshooting​

A developer appears only partly in reports​

This is often an identity split: the same person committing under more than one email. Check the developer identities link at Settings > Developers, then recalculate. Confirming an identity link queues a rebuild of your analytics.

A number is thin right after activity​

Rollups build after ingestion, and the System Signals panel reports pipeline lag. Allow processing to catch up before treating a thin number as a fault.

If this doesn't fix it​

Contact support with all of the following. Tickets missing these take longer to resolve:

  • The dashboard number in question, the work area, and the period.
  • The developer, branch, and repo from the breadcrumb.
  • Whether an AI analysis provider is connected, and what the System Signals panel reported.
  • Your deployment kind and, for on-premises deployments, your server version.