peek vs Sentry Spotlight
Both put debugging context in front of you locally. The delta: peek records your real browser passively and hands the session to your AI coding agent to debug what already happened; Spotlight surfaces the events your Sentry SDK already emits, in-app, for you to read while you develop.
This page is for the person searching “Sentry Spotlight alternative” or “local error debugging for an AI agent.” No FUD — Sentry Spotlight is a well-built, free, local dev tool. The two overlap on “debug locally,” but they capture different things, for a different consumer. The sections below say when each fits.
At a glance
| peek | Sentry Spotlight | |
|---|---|---|
| Primary consumer | Your AI coding agent (over MCP) | You, reading an in-app debug overlay |
| What it captures | The real browser session itself — rrweb DOM history, console & network errors, the action before an error | The events your Sentry SDK emits (errors, traces, spans) |
| Instrumentation | None — a browser extension records passively; no SDK in your app | Requires the Sentry SDK wired into your app |
| Output | Forensic answers to your agent + a runnable Playwright repro | A live, readable view of Sentry events during dev |
| Data location | Local: ~/.peek/sessions.db. peek uploads nothing; what your MCP client does with the data is up to you. | Local during dev; the same events also flow to Sentry if configured |
| License | Apache-2.0, OSS | MIT, OSS |
When Sentry Spotlight is the right choice
- You already run the Sentry SDK and want its events surfaced in-app while you develop.
- You want errors, traces, and spans correlated the way Sentry models them.
- Your debugging is you-reading-events, not an AI agent querying a session.
When peek is the right choice
- You want your AI coding agent to debug a real browser session — “what did the user do right before this error?” — without instrumenting your app.
- You want the session turned into a runnable Playwright repro the agent can re-run to verify its fix.
- You want capture to stay local with no SDK and no vendor account.
Can you use both?
Yes — they sit at different layers. Spotlight shows you the Sentry events your app emits; peek gives your agent the surrounding browser session to reconstruct how the error was reached and to produce a repro. One is for you, one is for your agent.
Why this page exists
peek is often mis-filed next to anything labeled “local debugging.” It isn't an error-monitoring overlay — it's forensic read access to your real, passively-recorded browser sessions, built for an AI coding agent. This page draws that line honestly.
Found something inaccurate above? Open a PR on this page — the goal is accuracy, not advocacy.