Platform debugging with deep session replay: turn up the signal, decrease the noise.

With the successful release of our System Auto-Documentation feature it became clear just how much developers value automated solutions that cut down on manual work. This realization also highlighted a major pain point many teams face: the inefficiency of gathering the right information to effectively debug complex platform issues.

Like documentation, debugging is a necessary but often tedious task. Developers are forced to manually reproduce issues and waste time and energy hunting for relevant data within the myriad logs, metrics and traces they receive. They don’t have a single tool that provides all of the data they need across the entire software platform - including the backend.

With Multiplayer's deep insight into your software—from the high-level architecture down to the individual components, APIs, and dependencies—we have a better way to address these challenges in complex systems.

Introducing the Multiplayer Platform Debugger: this tool records deep session replays which include all the relevant data needed to find and fix a bug - from frontend screens to backend distributed traces, metrics, and logs.

Now, your team can quickly triage and debug issues with a full picture of the problem, without the guesswork of trying to figure out what’s happening in the backend or the headache of sifting through irrelevant data.

The Problems with Current Debugging Approaches

In conversations with engineering teams, three major issues with current debugging methods consistently stand out:

The first challenge is visibility.

Many organizations, particularly those with legacy systems and technical debt, lack full visibility into their system architecture. Without a clear, real-time view of all components, dependencies, and integrations, debugging feels like an archaeological dig—painstakingly uncovering layer by layer to understand the system design, architecture, and design decisions before pinpointing the root cause of the problem.

The second challenge is the overwhelming amount of manual work.

When an issue arises, the typical debugging process involves:

• Reproducing the issue based on vague, incomplete reports, if any steps are provided at all.
• Sifting through APM data, searching through endless logs and traces, discarding irrelevant information to focus on errors, exceptions, and warnings.
• Navigating across scattered resources—documentation, architecture diagrams, decision records, APIs, repos—just to piece together a comprehensive understanding of the system.

The third challenge is inadequate tooling.

Modern software systems are increasingly complex, with interdependent internal and external services. Current debugging approaches provide an incomplete view of the problem because they only focus on a portion of the tech stack.

They either focus on frontend events, code introspection, or show what’s happening between the browser and the backend without actually showing what’s inside your platform, continuing to treat the backend as a “black box.”

In summary, current debugging practices are bogged down by this excessive manual effort, inaccurate documentation, and disjointed system information.

The Cost of Inefficient Debugging

The cost of relying on outdated debugging methods is far greater than it may seem at first glance.

A quick calculation reveals the substantial impact on both team capacity and budget:

◆ According to a recent Atlassian survey, developers are losing 8+ hours a week due to inefficiencies.
◆ The average salary (globally) for a backend developer is $67,227.

This means organizations spend roughly $13,445 per developer per year on inefficiencies.

For a team of 10, that’s the equivalent of having two full-time developers focused purely on inefficiencies. For SMBs and startups, where speed to market is critical, this is a significant waste of resources.

At larger companies with teams of 400 engineers, these costs can balloon to $5M annually.

But beyond the financial toll, there’s an equally crucial factor to consider: Developer Experience (DX). DX impacts how engineers perceive their work, directly influencing productivity, engagement, happiness and retention.

Inaccurate, manual, and scattered documentation combined with insufficient debugging tools that don’t take into consideration the current status of the software system, has a direct effect on DX, ultimately hindering teams' ability to deliver reliable, scalable, and maintainable software.

How Multiplayer Changes Debugging

The Multiplayer Platform Debugger leverages our comprehensive understanding of your entire backend system architecture to ensure recorded sessions include all relevant data—from frontend screens to deep platform traces, metrics, and logs—helping your team quickly troubleshoot issues.

Multiplayer is a game changer because it provides deep session replays that include both frontend and backend information from a session, saving time for developers, QA, and DevOps alike.

Your team can expect these benefits:

• Reduced Inefficiencies: Multiplayer captures the steps to reproduce an issue, along with relevant backend data, all in one click. No more hunting through APM data, logs, traces, or scattered documentation.
• Faster Cross-Team Alignment: Engineers (and end users!) can simply share a session link that includes all the relevant information instead of writing long tickets or having to clarify issues through endless back-and-forth communication.
• Uninterrupted Deep Work: Context switching is minimized, allowing engineers to access a single source of truth for all system information, freeing them to focus on meaningful, productive work.

Platform Debugger not only boosts developer productivity and experience but also transforms your end-user support interactions.

Instead of lengthy email exchanges with attached screenshots and descriptions, your users can install the Multiplayer Platform Debugger and share deep session recordings directly with your team. This streamlines troubleshooting, allowing your team to swiftly identify and resolve issues, which significantly speeds up support ticket resolution.

Try Multiplayer Now

The release of Multiplayer's Platform Debugger is just the one more step in improving the developer experience, especially when managing complex distributed systems.

With session-based recordings capturing everything from frontend events to backend distributed traces, your team can stop wasting time manually documenting or gathering debugging data and focus on what truly matters: building and improving your software.

Why waste time when you can automate? Discover the impact of Multiplayer for your team with a free 30-day trial of all our features.