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Runtime Insight

PHP Version Build Status Latest Version License

AI-Augmented PHP Runtime Error Analyzer & Explainer for Laravel and Symfony applications.

Transform cryptic runtime errors into human-readable explanations with actionable fix suggestions.

Documentation

Document What it covers
This README Install, quick start, high-level features, configuration sketch, architecture overview, links to deeper topics
USAGE.md Laravel and Symfony integration, all Artisan/console commands, full configuration reference, caching, database and performance context, root cause analysis (metadata, diagnostics, custom analyzer), events and EventDispatcherInterface, webhooks (env vars, payload, security), AI providers, production hardening, troubleshooting
CHANGELOG.md Notable changes by version (see v0.1.0 for root cause Phase 2, events, webhooks, Symfony wiring)
CONTRIBUTING.md Local setup, tests, PHPStan, code style, documentation expectations for contributors

🎯 What is Runtime Insight?

Runtime Insight intercepts runtime exceptions and errors in your PHP applications, analyzes them using structured context and AI reasoning, and produces:

  • Plain-English explanations of what went wrong
  • Root cause analysis explaining why it happened
  • Actionable fix suggestions to resolve the issue
  • Confidence scores for AI-generated insights

The Problem

Typical PHP runtime errors provide:

Call to a member function id() on null

This tells you what failed, but not why.

The Solution

Runtime Insight explains:

❗ Runtime Error Explained

Error:
  Call to a member function id() on null

Why this happened:
  The `$user` variable is null because this route can be accessed
  without authentication, but the controller assumes a logged-in user.

Where:
  App\Http\Controllers\OrderController.php:42

Called from (fix here):
  App\Http\Controllers\OrderController.php:38

Code block (to update):
  →  42 |   return $user->id;

Suggested Fix:
  - Add authentication middleware to this route
  - OR guard access using:
    if ($request->user() === null) { ... }

Confidence: 0.92

✨ Features

  • 🔍 Smart Error Interception - Hooks into Laravel & Symfony exception handling
  • 📍 Code Block to Update - Shows the exact code snippet and call site so you know where to fix (file:line + snippet)
  • 🧠 AI-Powered Analysis - Optional AI reasoning for complex errors
  • 📚 Rule-Based Patterns - Fast, deterministic matching for common errors
  • 🎨 Multiple Output Formats - Console, logs, or debug UI
  • 🔌 Framework Agnostic Core - Shared logic between Laravel & Symfony
  • 🛡️ Privacy First - Sanitized request data, environment-aware
  • ⚡ Non-Blocking - Never interferes with your application's flow
  • 💾 Explanation Caching - Cache repeated errors to reduce API calls
  • 🗄️ Database Query Context - Optional recent queries in context (Laravel)
  • 📊 Memory & Performance Context - Optional peak memory at time of error
  • 🔄 Runtime Intelligence Pipeline - Signal collectors, root cause analyzer, and pattern analyzer (e.g. N+1, validation hints) enrich explanations via metadata
  • 📜 Log Analysis - runtime:analyze summarizes error types and counts, highlights top failures by signature
  • ⏱️ Runtime Timeline - runtime:timeline reconstructs events before the last failure (T+ seconds from log)
  • 🔔 Webhooks - Optional HTTP POST to your URLs after each analysis (AfterAnalysisEvent), for Slack or internal alerts (failures logged only; see USAGE.md)

🎯 Supported Error Types

Runtime Insight supports all error types with descriptive explanations (fixes #25):

  • Dedicated strategies for common PHP errors (high confidence, specific cause and suggestions).
  • Descriptive fallback for any other exception type (RuntimeException, LogicException, InvalidArgumentException, etc.) so you never get a generic “exception was thrown” message.
Error Type Example Confidence
Null Pointer Call to member function on null 0.85
Undefined Index Undefined array key "user_id" 0.88
Type Error Argument #1 must be of type string, int given 0.90
Argument Count Too few arguments to function 0.92
Class Not Found Class 'App\Models\User' not found 0.88
Division by Zero Division by zero 0.90
Parse Error syntax error, unexpected "}" 0.88
Value Error first(): Argument #1 must be a non-empty array 0.85

Unmatched exceptions (e.g. RuntimeException, InvalidArgumentException) receive a descriptive fallback (cause + suggestions) instead of a generic message.

Each strategy provides:

  • Cause explanation - Why the error occurred
  • Suggestions - Actionable fixes
  • Context-aware hints - Based on your source code

📋 Requirements

  • PHP 8.2+
  • Laravel 10+ or Symfony 6.4+ (7.x also supported)
  • Guzzle 7 (already required) is used for optional webhook POST delivery

📦 Installation

composer require zaeem2396/runtime-insight

Laravel: After installing, add the OpenAI API key to your .env (used by default):

php artisan runtime:install

This appends OPEN_AI_APIKEY= to your .env if it is not already there. Set your OpenAI API key as the value (you can also use RUNTIME_INSIGHT_AI_KEY). If you run php artisan runtime:explain without a key, you will see: No OpenAI API key found. Set OPEN_AI_APIKEY or RUNTIME_INSIGHT_AI_KEY in your .env file.

🚀 Quick Start (Standalone)

use ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight\RuntimeInsightFactory;

// Create an instance with default configuration
$insight = RuntimeInsightFactory::create();

try {
    // Your code that might throw an exception
    $user->getName(); // Throws: Call to member function on null
} catch (Throwable $e) {
    $explanation = $insight->analyze($e);
    
    echo $explanation->getMessage();     // The error message
    echo $explanation->getCause();       // Why it happened
    echo $explanation->getConfidence();  // 0.85
    
    foreach ($explanation->getSuggestions() as $suggestion) {
        echo "- $suggestion\n";
    }
}

Laravel

The package auto-registers via Laravel's package discovery.

  1. Publish the config (optional):
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=runtime-insight-config
  1. Add your OpenAI API key (default AI provider):
php artisan runtime:install

Then set OPEN_AI_APIKEY or RUNTIME_INSIGHT_AI_KEY in .env to your key. If it is missing when you run the explain command, you will see No OpenAI API key found.

Automatic Exception Analysis:

Add the trait to your exception handler:

// app/Exceptions/Handler.php
use ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight\Laravel\Traits\HandlesRuntimeInsight;

class Handler extends ExceptionHandler
{
    use HandlesRuntimeInsight;

    public function report(Throwable $e): void
    {
        $this->analyzeWithRuntimeInsight($e);
        parent::report($e);
    }
}

Artisan Commands:

# Add OPEN_AI_APIKEY to .env (run once after install)
php artisan runtime:install

# Explain the last error
php artisan runtime:explain

# Validate setup
php artisan runtime:doctor

Symfony

Register the bundle in config/bundles.php:

return [
    // ...
    ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight\Symfony\RuntimeInsightBundle::class => ['all' => true],
];

Create configuration in config/packages/runtime_insight.yaml:

runtime_insight:
    enabled: true
    ai:
        enabled: true
        provider: openai
        model: gpt-4.1-mini
    webhooks:
        enabled: false
        urls: []

⚙️ Configuration

// config/runtime-insight.php (Laravel)
return [
    'enabled' => true,

    'ai' => [
        'enabled' => true,
        'provider' => 'openai',      // openai (default), anthropic, ollama
        'model' => 'gpt-4.1-mini',
        // Set OPEN_AI_APIKEY in .env (or run php artisan runtime:install)
        'timeout' => 5,
    ],

    'context' => [
        'source_lines' => 10,        // Lines of code around error
        'include_request' => true,   // Include request context
        'sanitize_inputs' => true,   // Scrub sensitive data
        'include_database_queries' => false,  // Recent queries (Laravel query log)
        'max_database_queries' => 5,
        'include_performance_context' => false,  // Peak memory at time of error
    ],

    'cache' => [
        'enabled' => true,           // Cache repeated error explanations
        'ttl' => 3600,               // Seconds (default: 1 hour)
    ],

    // Optional: POST JSON after each analysis (Slack, internal HTTP). Off by default.
    'webhooks' => [
        'enabled' => false,
        'urls' => [],
        'timeout' => 3,
        'headers' => [],
    ],

    'environments' => ['local', 'staging'],  // Where to enable
];

🚀 Usage

Automatic Mode

Once installed, Runtime Insight automatically intercepts exceptions and logs explanations.

Artisan Commands (Laravel)

# Explain the most recent runtime error
php artisan runtime:explain

# Explain a specific log entry (exception type is parsed from the log for accurate strategy matching)
php artisan runtime:explain --log=storage/logs/laravel.log --line=243

# Batch: explain all (or last N) exceptions in a log file
php artisan runtime:explain --log=storage/logs/laravel.log --all
php artisan runtime:explain --log=storage/logs/laravel.log --all --limit=5

# Write explanation to a file
php artisan runtime:explain --log=storage/logs/laravel.log --output=explanation.txt

# Analyze log file: summarize error counts and top failures
php artisan runtime:analyze storage/logs/laravel.log
php artisan runtime:analyze --top=20

# Show runtime timeline (events before last failure, T+ seconds)
php artisan runtime:timeline storage/logs/laravel.log
php artisan runtime:timeline --last=30

# Run diagnostics
php artisan runtime:doctor

Console Commands (Symfony)

# Explain the last exception
php bin/console runtime:explain

# Analyze log file: summarize error counts and top failures
php bin/console runtime:analyze var/log/dev.log

# Show runtime timeline (events before last failure)
php bin/console runtime:timeline var/log/dev.log
php bin/console runtime:timeline --last=30

# Validate setup
php bin/console runtime:doctor

See USAGE.md for detailed documentation.

🏗️ Architecture

The runtime intelligence pipeline (inside RuntimeInsight) runs in a fixed order for analyze(), analyzeFromLog(), and analyzeContext():

  1. Context — ContextBuilderInterface builds RuntimeContext (exception, stack, source, framework context).
  2. Collectors — Optional CollectorRegistry enriches context (queries, request snapshot, memory, queue, cache, etc.).
  3. BeforeAnalysisEvent — Dispatched after enrichment, before the explanation engine runs. Listeners receive the current RuntimeContext (readonly DTO; copy/transform in your own code if you extend behaviour).
  4. Explanation — ExplanationEngineInterface produces the core Explanation (strategies + optional AI).
  5. Root cause & pattern — RootCauseAnalyzerInterface and PatternAnalyzerInterface attach metadata to the explanation when configured.
  6. AfterAnalysisEvent — Dispatched with the final Explanation and RuntimeContext. Built-in webhooks (if enabled in config) register here as an AfterAnalysisEvent listener.
  7. Output — Framework layers (Laravel ExceptionHandler, Symfony subscriber, Artisan/console commands) render or log results using renderers or plain logging.
┌──────────────────────┐
│ Framework / CLI      │  Laravel, Symfony, or RuntimeInsightFactory (standalone)
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ ContextBuilder       │  RuntimeContext
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ CollectorRegistry    │  Enriched RuntimeContext
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ BeforeAnalysisEvent  │  EventDispatcherInterface
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ ExplanationEngine    │  Explanation
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ RootCause + Pattern  │  Explanation + metadata
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ AfterAnalysisEvent   │  (+ optional HTTP webhooks to configured URLs)
└──────────┬───────────┘
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│ Return / log / UI    │  Renderers, logs, commands
└──────────────────────┘

Key types (PHP namespaces under ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight):

Piece Type / class
Analyzer entrypoint RuntimeInsight (AnalyzerInterface)
Events Event\BeforeAnalysisEvent, Event\AfterAnalysisEvent
Dispatcher contract Contracts\EventDispatcherInterface (dispatch, addListener)
Default dispatcher Event\InMemoryEventDispatcher
Dispatcher construction Event\InMemoryEventDispatcherFactory::create(Config, ?LoggerInterface) — used by Laravel, Symfony, and RuntimeInsightFactory::createWithConfig() when no custom dispatcher is passed
Webhook delivery Contracts\WebhookSenderInterface, Webhook\GuzzleWebhookSender, Webhook\AfterAnalysisWebhookListener
Root cause analysis Engine\RootCauseAnalyzer (and Engine\RootCause\* helpers) attach structured root_cause metadata (primary cause, fixes, stack diagnostics)

For listener registration examples, webhook payload schema, root cause metadata, and every config key, see USAGE.md — Events and event dispatcher, USAGE.md — Root cause analysis, and USAGE.md — Webhooks.

🔌 Extensibility

Runtime Insight is designed for extensibility:

  • AI Provider Factory - ProviderFactory creates the configured provider (openai, anthropic, ollama) with optional fallback chain
  • Custom AI Providers - Implement the AIProviderInterface
  • Explanation Caching - When cache.enabled is true, the engine caches explanations by error signature (class, message, file, line) to avoid repeated AI calls
  • Events - EventDispatcherInterface dispatches BeforeAnalysisEvent (after context enrichment) and AfterAnalysisEvent (after explanation, root cause, and pattern). The same dispatcher instance is injected into RuntimeInsight in Laravel and Symfony; use addListener() early in the container lifecycle (e.g. Laravel AppServiceProvider::boot) so listeners are registered before exceptions are analyzed. See USAGE.md.
  • Webhooks - When webhooks.enabled is true and urls is non-empty, each URL receives a POST after AfterAnalysisEvent. Configure under webhooks in Laravel config or runtime_insight.webhooks in Symfony YAML. Environment: RUNTIME_INSIGHT_WEBHOOKS_ENABLED, RUNTIME_INSIGHT_WEBHOOK_URLS, RUNTIME_INSIGHT_WEBHOOK_TIMEOUT. Details: USAGE.md.
  • Custom Explanation Strategies - Add domain-specific patterns
  • Output & Rendering - RendererFactory::forFormat() supports text, json, markdown, html, ide. Use RendererInterface for custom renderers.
  • Custom Renderers - Output to JSON, HTML, Slack, etc.
// app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php (excerpt) — register listeners in boot() so they
// exist before any exception is analyzed. Symfony: resolve EventDispatcherInterface from
// the container in a similar early service (e.g. an EventSubscriber on kernel.request).
namespace App\Providers;

use ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight\Contracts\EventDispatcherInterface;
use ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight\Event\AfterAnalysisEvent;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;

class AppServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
    public function boot(): void
    {
        $this->app->make(EventDispatcherInterface::class)
            ->addListener(AfterAnalysisEvent::class, static function (AfterAnalysisEvent $e): void {
                // Read $e->explanation and $e->context; avoid heavy I/O on the exception path
            });
    }
}
use ClarityPHP\RuntimeInsight\Contracts\AIProviderInterface;

class CustomAIProvider implements AIProviderInterface
{
    public function getName(): string
    {
        return 'custom';
    }

    public function analyze(RuntimeContext $context): Explanation
    {
        // Your custom AI integration
    }

    public function isAvailable(): bool
    {
        return true;
    }
}

🚫 What This Package Does NOT Do

❌ Does NOT ✅ Does
Track errors (like Sentry) Explain errors
Modify your code Suggest fixes
Block requests Run non-blocking
Exfiltrate data Keep data local
Replace error trackers Complement them

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please read our Contributing Guide before submitting a Pull Request.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/zaeem2396/runtime-insight.git
cd runtime-insight

# Install dependencies
composer install

# Run tests
composer test

# Run static analysis
composer analyse

# Check code style
composer cs-check

📄 License

Runtime Insight is open-sourced software licensed under the MIT license.

About

PHP Runtime Insight is a PHP library for Laravel and Symfony that turns runtime exceptions into plain-English explanations. It collects context (stack trace, request, etc.), uses rule-based and optional AI analysis, and returns “why it broke” plus suggested fixes in console, HTML, or JSON.

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