# Show HN: Brytlog – AI logger

> Source: <https://github.com/Guy-Sela/brytlog>
> Published: 2026-06-27 08:06:02+00:00

Brytlog replaces raw logs with AI summary, **thus saving developers time, trouble and money.**

In agentic workflows brytlog acts as a cheap, fast pre-processor to the chief agent.

For example, Claude Opus 4.8 (chief agent) might run `brytlog python run.py`

, rather than the plain `python run.py`

. This way, instead of having to process the entire raw output on its own (slow, expensive, bloats context), it will only get a concise summary, generated by a cheaper, faster model, such as Gemini-3-flash.

- As a fail-safe, raw logs are saved so they can be accessed by the chief agent or developer if still needed (this is a toggleable feature in config).
- Even the cheaper model doesn't get the full raw dump, just the important parts, thus saving even more time and money.

In non-agentic, dev-driven workflows, brytlog simply saves the developer the time and trouble of analyzing raw output by himself, or copy-pasting lines into a coding assistant.

- free
- open source
- platform, language and llm vendor agnostic
- minimal setup (just bring your own key, or run locally)
- no need to change existing code (just add a couple of lines to AGENTS.md)
- lightweight (~50 KB, ~1,400 lines of code)
- customizable
- privacy-minded (brytlog doesn't collect any data, and it redacts sensitive information before passing it to the LLM)

| Without brytlog | With brytlog | With brytlog --json |
|---|---|---|
## demo-no-brytlog.mp4 |
## demo-with-brytlog.mp4 |
## demo-json-output.mp4 |

```
pip install brytlog
```

After installation either run a command using brytlog (e.g. `brytlog node main.js`

), which will launch an on-boarding config process in the terminal, or run `brytlog --config`

to open a json configuration file in your default editor.

- LLM provider (e.g. Anthropic)
- Model (e.g. claude-haiku-4-5)
- API key (e.g. JQ.Ab9RN6W6QW7cmcnY92DIuoVtjCpKm_qfmO5T5oGzQmnwe5fjhw)

- Google Gemini: Use keys from Google AI Studio (
[https://aistudio.google.com/]). Google Cloud Vertex AI is not natively supported yet.- Custom Providers: Supports OpenAI-compatible endpoints (Ollama, vLLM, etc.) via standard
`Authorization: Bearer`

headers. Azure OpenAI is not natively supported yet.

- Base URL (e.g.
[http://localhost:11434/v1](http://localhost:11434/v1))

Simply prefix any command with `brytlog`

.

Syntax: `brytlog [options] <command>`

.

Examples:

```
brytlog python run.py 
brytlog --api-key xyz... node build.js
brytlog --model claude-haiku-4-5 ./deploy.sh
```

Wrap the entire string in quotes to run multiple commands together.

```
brytlog "pip install -r requirements.txt && python run.py"

brytlog "node main.js
         npm run serve"
```

Either prompt inline at the beginning of a session or add this or similar to AGENTS.md:

```
brytlog replaces raw terminal output with a concise AI summary.

Use it for interpreters (e.g.`python`, `node`), compilers, build tools (e.g. `npm`, `make`), and test runners (e.g. `pytest`). Do not use it for standard OS utilities (e.g.` ls`, `cat`), version control (e.g.` git`), or interactive CLI tools (e.g.` htop`).

Syntax: `brytlog [options] <command>` (e.g., `brytlog --json python run.py`).
```

Instead of raw log, a short report is outputted to the terminal.

```
                                   ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

                                                     🧠📜 brytlog crash report

Problem
The program crashed due to a TypeError when attempting to divide an integer by a string. The 'items' value from the configuration is a string and needs to be converted to an integer for arithmetic operations.

Fix
Convert payload['items'] to an integer before division in /var/folders/ys/zfg72rwd661dn0cnrsqth5sh0000gn/T/tmph1e0wuse.py, line 6:
average = payload['total'] / int(payload['items'])

Full report → /path/to/project/brytlog-reports/2026-06-15T14-11-51.log
Full raw log → /path/to/project/brytlog-raw/2026-06-15T14-11-51.txt

                                   ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
```

| Flag | Description |
|---|---|
`--version` |
Show program's version number and exit |
`--config` |
Open the configuration file |
`--reset` |
Reset configuration to defaults |
`--upgrade` |
Upgrade brytlog to the latest version on PyPI |
`--test` |
Run a simulated crash to test the LLM configuration |
`--logs` |
List recent logs from the local `brytlog-reports/` directory |
`--provider` |
LLM provider (`google` , `openai` , `anthropic` , `grok` , `ollama` , `custom` ) |
`--model` |
LLM model to use (e.g., `gpt-4o-mini` ) |
`--api-key` |
Pass API key inline |
`--api-base-url` |
Base URL for `custom` or `ollama` providers |
`--json` |
Output the report as JSON |
`--no-log` |
Disable writing AI reports to the local `brytlog-reports/` directory |
`--no-raw-log` |
Disable writing raw logs to the local `brytlog-raw/` directory |
`--quiet` |
Suppress the live stream of raw logs in the terminal (default) |
`--no-quiet` |
Display the live stream of raw logs in the terminal (override quiet default) |

| Variable | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
`BRYTLOG_API_KEY` |
— | Required for crash reports (unless using local llm) |
`BRYTLOG_PROVIDER` |
— | LLM provider |
`BRYTLOG_MODEL` |
— | LLM model |
`BRYTLOG_API_BASE_URL` |
— | Required for `custom` provider |
`BRYTLOG_SAVE_REPORT` |
`true` |
Set to `false` to disable AI report files |
`BRYTLOG_SAVE_RAW_LOG` |
`true` |
Set to `false` to disable raw log files |
`BRYTLOG_QUIET` |
`true` |
Set to `true` to mute live terminal output |
`BRYTLOG_MAX_INPUT` |
`4000` |
Max tokens (approximate) of terminal output to keep |
`BRYTLOG_SYSTEM_PROMPT` |
(built-in) | Custom system prompt for the crash report |
`BRYTLOG_TEMPERATURE` |
`0.2` |
Model temperature |
`BRYTLOG_MAX_OUTPUT` |
`1000` |
Max tokens for the report. Note: API token limits are automatically padded (min 2048) to accommodate reasoning models. |

brytlog runs a given command as a child process, diverts its `stdout`

and `stderr`

away from the terminal by default, and instead only outputs a concise AI summary of the run.

Possible scenarios:

**Clean success**(exit`0`

, no warning-like keywords): reports success and sends nothing to the LLM.**Success with warnings**(exit`0`

, keywords such as`warning`

,`deprecated`

, or`skipped`

detected): sends a sampled head / warnings / tail excerpt to the chosen LLM for a short summary of the run.**Crash**(non-zero exit): sends a token-bounded head-and-tail excerpt of the output to the LLM and prints a concise problem/fix report.

Because brytlog wraps the process rather than hooking into it, it works for **any language or runtime** with no changes to the program being run.

``` php
flowchart TD
    A[Run command] --> B[Capture output and exit code]
    B --> C{Success}

    C -- Yes --> D{Warnings detected}
    C -- No --> F[Build excerpt]

    D -- No --> E[Print success]
    D -- Yes --> F

    F --> G[Send to LLM]
    G --> H[Print AI report]

    B -.-> I["Save raw log (optional)"]
    H -.-> J["Save AI report (optional)"]
```

- CLI flags take precedence over environment variables, which in turn take precedence over the config file.
- Configuration is saved globally to
`~/.brytlog.json`

(`C:\Users\Name\.brytlog.json`

on Windows). You can edit this file directly or run`brytlog --config`

to open it.- Logs are saved locally to
`brytlog-reports/`

and`brytlog-raw/`

in the current working directory. You may want to add`brytlog-*/`

to your`.gitignore`

.- To be clear: raw command output is muted (run in quiet mode) to humans and AI agents by default to save tokens and prevent context bloat. In quiet mode,
`stdin`

is redirected to`/dev/null`

, meaning any interactive prompt will instantly crash the program (e.g.`EOFError`

) to generate a helpful AI report rather than hanging indefinitely. Brytlog only prints the concise AI report if a command fails. To display the live stream of raw logs in the terminal as usual and answer interactive prompts, use`--no-quiet`

.- Reasoning models (e.g., Gemini Flash-3-Preview): These models spend a large portion of their output budget on "thinking" tokens. Brytlog automatically enforces a 2048-token floor at the API level to ensure these models have room to think, while still instructing them to keep the visible report under your
`MAX_OUTPUT`

limit.- Enforcing agent use of brytlog, rather than relying on AGENTS.md or direct prompting, is also possible (e.g. via subprocess shim on PATH), but out of scope in this version.

MIT