Skip to content
Feature

Tree, Flow, and Timeline

Three lenses answer different questions about the same recording. Learn when to use each, and your investigations get faster immediately.

The three lenses

Tree

Presents hierarchical scopes and events. Start here when you know roughly where the story lives, or when you need hierarchical context before time-based exploration.

  • Orient Understand the recording structure
  • Inspect Open a specific scope's details
  • Drill Jump toward Exception Flow or Method Flow
  • Control Expand and collapse dense regions deliberately

Flow

Also called Scope Flow, it visualizes execution travel through the scope hierarchy. Use it when the question is about path rather than hierarchy: did execution enter the expected scope, did it take an unexpected branch, and where did it diverge from your mental model?

  • Playback Follow Execution with step captions
  • Filters Options such as Hide Tiny reduce clutter
  • Signals Choreographed travelers for concurrent activity

Timeline

The time-centric investigation board, with profiler-style modules. Use it when the question is when the value flipped, what spiked before the failure, or whether a probe event preceded a watched write.

  • Playhead Keeps Watch Studio and Probe Map aligned
Report Timeline on the Overview module, with execution, method activity, and memory lanes
Start on Overview to find the interesting range, then open Execution, Methods, Watches, or Probes on the same playhead.

Timeline modules

Module What it shows
Overview Combined runtime activity
Execution Scope hierarchy and runtime duration
Methods Method invocations and call activity
Memory Object lifetime and GC activity
Events Runtime events and exceptions
State Recorded state transitions
Watches How watched values evolved and what caused changes
Probes Environment probe activity

Choosing the right lens

If you ask Open
Where in the hierarchy? Tree
How did execution travel? Flow
When did it happen? Timeline
What did a value do over time? Watch Studio
What did the environment do? Probe Map

A practical reading pattern

  1. Timeline Overview
  2. Tree around the spike
  3. Flow for path confirmation
  4. Specialized surface
Step 1 of 4

Timeline Overview

Start with time. Skim the Overview module to find the range where the recording gets interesting, such as a spike, a gap, or an exception marker.

Reports Watch Studio Causal Flow Probe Map