- name
- debug-broken-ui
- description
- Find out why something in a running web app does not work, when the console is empty and the code looks correct. Reads the click, the request, the store and the console together and returns the file:line to open. Use when a button does nothing, a form will not submit, data will not load, a page renders blank or stale, a modal will not close, or the user says "it's broken" and the code review says it is fine.
- license
- Apache-2.0
- metadata
- version: 3.9.0 homepage: https://www.reticle.sh repository: https://github.com/reticlehq/reticle
The app is broken and the code looks fine
Reading the source again will not tell you why. The evidence is in the running app, and most of it never reaches the screen: the request that failed, the store that never moved, the handler that was never bound, the element covered by something invisible.
Reticle reads all of it from inside the page. Not set up? Follow the reticle skill: it installs Reticle, asks the user before init changes the app's files, and proves one flow.
Do not start by guessing. Start by reproducing.
reticle_look({ action: "page", sessionId, mode: "interactive" }) // controls only, with refs
reticle_act_and_wait({ sessionId, ref, action: "click", until: { kind: "element", query: { testid: "..." } } })
The verdict already narrows it: no / contradicted means a channel saw something incompatible with the UI: you have the bug. unknown means Reticle drove it and could not tell, which is a different investigation from "it failed".
Read the act result before you call anything else. Its summary block already carries the whole causal window of that one click: net {total, errors, headline}, consoleErrors, stateDiffs [{path, from, to}], storageDiffs [{key, from, to}], route, signals, layoutShift, longTasks: real before→after diffs, not counts. The console, network, storage and state calls below are for going DEEPER into something the summary already pointed at. Calling all three straight after an act pays three model round trips (and, in an approval-gated client, three human clicks) for evidence you were already holding.
summary.stateUnwatched: true means the state channel is dark: no subscribable store is registered, so an empty stateDiffs means unwatched, not unchanged, and no state-based conclusion is available until someone registers the store. It is the one field here that is about your instrumentation rather than about the app.
When the summary does point somewhere, read that channel scoped to what you just did: pass since from the act result, or you are reading a buffer that predates the click:
reticle_observe({ action: "console", sessionId, since })
reticle_observe({ action: "network", sessionId, since })
reticle_look({ action: "state", sessionId, store })