Investigate with session replay

Session replay shows what happened in the browser. Use it to understand the customer-visible steps around an error, then follow the linked Issue and backend evidence instead of treating the recording as the complete explanation.

Find the right recording

Open Analytics → Replays and search by customer or session ID. Check the start time and duration before opening a recording. When you begin from a customer timeline or Issue, prefer the replay linked there because it already preserves the relevant person and failure context.

The customer page’s Recorded replay card shows the linked session and its recorded duration. Select View replay to inspect the actual captured screen and interactions. The card does not preview screen contents or indicate that a session is currently live.

The recording list belongs to the active project. If a known session is absent, confirm the project before changing replay capture settings.

Product-analytics drill-downs point here. Every funnel or retention contribution event that carries a session ID also reports whether that session has a recording — available, none_recorded, or withheld when the credential you used has no replay:read. See Inspect one contribution.

Recording metadata and playback require the recording's project to still exist and be active. Deleted projects are omitted from organization-wide recording lists, and direct reads of their recordings return not found. If Anectico cannot verify the current project, the read is temporarily unavailable; retry instead of treating this as evidence that no recording exists. The same check applies through the dashboard, MCP and CLI. It does not require an additional projects:read permission on your replay credential.

Deleting a project or organization also schedules asynchronous Replay cleanup. Cleanup removes stored chunks, including chunks left without an index after interrupted uploads, before removing recording metadata. Failed cleanup remains pending for retry. The deletion response confirms the scope deletion; it does not confirm that all stored objects have already been removed.

Read the timeline

Play the session once to understand the journey, then use the timeline markers to revisit failed requests and captured errors. A marker is evidence that something happened at that time; it is not by itself proof of the cause.

Use the panels below the player deliberately:

• Console shows browser console entries only when console capture was enabled.
• Network shows captured request activity and failed-request markers only when network capture was enabled.
• Errors shows errors related to the session and links grouped failures back to their Issue.

Select an entry to seek to its point in the recording. Use the Person link to return to the customer story, and review Events in this session for meaningful application actions. On a narrow screen, the player and context panels stack vertically and the recording stays within the available page width, so use the same controls without horizontally scrolling the dashboard.

Follow the backend evidence

A replay becomes much more useful when browser requests propagate W3C traceparent and trusted identity context to an instrumented backend. From the related error or customer timeline, open the trace and logs for the same moment. Keep the project, environment, and time window unchanged while you compare them.

If the replay has missing chunks, treat the visible portion as incomplete. Network loss, page termination, blocked uploads, or retention can create gaps; do not infer that an action did not happen merely because it is not visible. Playback also checks that stored content matches the accepted recording. Changed content is omitted as a gap; a recording without enough information to verify its content is refused.

Protect customer data

Replay is intentionally opt-in. Input masking is enabled by default. Console and network capture are also enabled by default and can include sensitive application data — review what your application logs and sends, and disable them if needed. Anectico cannot reconstruct data that was masked in the browser.

If the player is empty, the wrong session is linked, or expected panels contain no data, see Replay or symbols are not working.

• Record session replay safely
• Understand one customer's story

Jump to recorded highlights

The replay player's Highlights tab lists recorded developer events and errors in chronological order. Select a timestamp to seek the recording; linked errors and traces open the underlying evidence. Highlights use the recorded_events_v1 method: they describe recorded signals, not an AI interpretation of the customer's intent or screen pixels. Silence does not establish abandonment, success, or recovery.

Highlights return at most 50 moments and preserve the related-signal feed's incomplete-data indicator. Missing/invalid timestamps, moments before the recording, and truncation make the result partial. A readable session and replay:content:read are required. Current recording retention applies on every read; there is no separate saved summary to outlive the evidence.

Agents can discover get_replay_highlights through list_read_actions and execute it with project_id and session_id. CLI: anectico replay highlights SESSION_ID. REST: GET /api/v1/replay/{session_id}/highlights?project_id=PROJECT_ID. Responses include the method, summary, timestamps, offsets, Issue/trace references, and partial.