Configure Debugging and Distributed Tracing

Covers a 10-step debug and trace configuration workflow. Development environment debugging via a VS Code launch.json covering four configuration types - launching a Node.js app with --inspect-brk and source maps, launching a TypeScript entry point via a tsc preLaunchTask, launching Jest tests with --runInBand and --detectOpenHandles, and attaching to an already-running process by PID - plus a compound configuration that starts a frontend and backend debug session together and stops both when either exits. Remote debugging setup for attaching a debugger across process or network boundaries. Distributed tracing via OpenTelemetry - a TracingSystem class configuring a NodeSDK with a JaegerExporter, a Resource carrying service name, version, and deployment environment, a BatchSpanProcessor, and auto-instrumentation that disables the noisy filesystem instrumentation while adding custom request and response hooks on HTTP and Express instrumentation to capture request body, response size, user ID, and session ID as span attributes, plus graceful shutdown. Debug logging frameworks, source map configuration for mapping minified production errors back to original source, and performance profiling. Debug configuration management for toggling debug settings across environments. Production debugging - a ProductionDebugger middleware gated behind a PRODUCTION_DEBUG environment flag, an auth token header, and an IP allowlist, which on an authorized request tags it with a debug context, temporarily overrides console methods to capture logs into that context, restores the original console on response finish, and optionally returns the captured debug info as a response header when explicitly requested. A debug dashboard for visualizing live debug state, and IDE integration for attaching editors directly to running local or remote processes without a separate manual setup step.

Use it when setting up remote debugging, implementing distributed tracing, configuring debug logging or source maps, profiling performance, or enabling safe production debugging. Skip it for anything unrelated to debug and trace configuration or outside this scope.

Input is a debugging or observability requirement - a service needing distributed tracing, a production issue needing safe live debugging, or a debug logging or source-map setup; output is the matching configuration: an OpenTelemetry tracing setup, a gated production-debug middleware, a source-map config, or an IDE debug configuration.

OpenTelemetry (NodeSDK, auto-instrumentations, Jaeger exporter) for distributed tracing, environment variables plus an IP allowlist and auth token for gating production debug access, and IDE debugger integration for local and remote attach workflows against a running Node.js or similar process.

Engineers setting up observability and debugging infrastructure who need concrete tracing, production-safe debug tooling, and IDE integration rather than assembling distributed tracing and gated debug access from scratch. Production-safe tracing gates access behind a debug-token header check and an IP allowlist, and it also covers setting up team-wide debugging workflows and logging standards across services.