Logs

Logs

Recollectium writes structured JSON logs for diagnostics while keeping CLI stdout reserved for command output. CLI output is human-readable by default and can be switched to JSON with cli_output or --json; logs still stay out of stdout.

Default location

Logs use the XDG state path by default:

~/.local/state/recollectium/logs/

You can override the logs directory with directories.logs in config.

Log config

Defaults:

{
  "logging": {
    "level": "info",
    "format": "json",
    "max_bytes": 10485760,
    "backup_count": 5
  }
}

Update log level:

recollectium config set logging.level debug

Override for one command:

recollectium --log-level debug list

Service logs

Managed services redirect stdout and stderr to service log files in the configured logs directory.

Common files include:

• service-api.log
• service-mcp.log
• Rotated backups based on logging.max_bytes and logging.backup_count

What logs are for

Use logs to diagnose:

• Config loading and validation problems.
• Database and migration issues.
• Service startup and shutdown behavior.
• Service discovery cleanup.
• Embedding readiness and re-embedding jobs.
• Runtime failures that are hard to see from CLI output alone.

What logs should not contain

Logs should not include:

• Memory content.
• Full metadata payloads.
• Credentials, tokens, passwords, API keys, or private keys.
• Sensitive local secrets.

If you share logs in an issue, review them first and replace anything sensitive with [REDACTED].