Django Orbit Documentation¶

Welcome to the Django Orbit documentation. This guide covers installation, configuration, usage, and customization.

Table of Contents¶

What is Django Orbit?¶

Django Orbit is an AI agent-native observability and debugging tool for Django applications. Unlike Django Debug Toolbar, which injects HTML into your templates, Orbit runs on its own isolated URL and exposes structured runtime evidence through both a human dashboard and MCP tools for AI assistants.

Key Concepts¶

OrbitEntry: The central model that stores all telemetry data
Middleware: Captures HTTP requests and coordinates recording
Watchers: Specialized components for SQL, logging, jobs, Redis, permissions, etc.
Family Hash: Links related events (e.g., all queries for one request)

Why Orbit?¶

Feature	Django Debug Toolbar	Django Orbit
DOM Injection	Yes	No
Works with APIs	Limited	Full
Works with SPAs	Limited	Full
Persistent Storage	No	Yes
Historical Data	No	Yes
Stats & Analytics	No	Yes
Modern UI	Basic	Focused dashboard
Agent-native MCP tools	No	Yes
Ticket-to-fix handoff bundles	No	Yes

What's New in v0.12.0¶

AI/LLM watcher: Orbit records provider, model, operation, latency, status, token usage and tool-call names for supported OpenAI and Anthropic SDK calls.
Metadata-first defaults: prompts, completions and tool-call arguments are not captured unless explicitly enabled.
Release safeguards: local release verification checks version consistency, changelog, package build, Twine metadata and strict docs.
Production safety guidance: docs now spell out conservative MCP and LLM capture settings for shared environments.

What's New in v0.11.0¶

Endpoint investigation: investigate_endpoint summarizes endpoint health across recent requests, errors, slow requests, query signals and exception groups.
Regression comparison: compare_endpoint_windows compares current endpoint behavior against a baseline window to detect regressions.
Agent safety tools: preview_masked_entry, find_sensitive_payload_risks and list_agent_safe_fields make MCP exposure auditable before sharing runtime context.
Higher-level triage: find_n_plus_one_candidates and summarize_exception_groups help agents move from noisy telemetry to ranked daily debugging targets.
Daily developer triage: daily_health_brief creates a local morning brief of top exceptions, failed jobs, slow queries, N+1 candidates and warning logs.
Release risk brief: generate_release_risk_brief flags blocker/caution signals before deploys.
PR context generation: generate_pr_context turns Orbit evidence into PR-ready summaries, test plans and release-risk notes.
Copy/paste agent prompts: create_incident_bundle(..., format="prompt") produces safe prompts for Claude, Codex and Cursor when MCP is unavailable.
MCP workflow expansion: all new tools are available through MCP and honor the existing MCP_ENABLED safety gate.
Codex and Claude debugging demo: the docs now include a practical ticket-to-test-to-fix workflow using Orbit context.

What's New in v0.10.0¶

Agent-native debugging base: Orbit now exposes high-level MCP tools that help AI assistants move from ticket or runtime error to evidence, fix hypotheses, test plans and incident bundles.
Safe MCP serialization: agent-facing output masks sensitive keys, can omit payloads, bounds result sizes and truncates oversized payloads deterministically.
Request and exception investigation: investigate_request and investigate_exception_group summarize timelines, related signals, likely causes and next actions.
Ticket-to-evidence workflow: build_debug_brief, create_incident_bundle, propose_fix_hypotheses and propose_test_plan support daily developer and coding-agent workflows.
MCP kill switch: MCP_ENABLED: False now blocks all MCP tools with a stable disabled response.

Telemetry opt-in is intentionally not included in v0.10.0. It is planned for a separate future release.

What's New in v0.9.1¶

MCP server runtime fix: orbit_mcp now works correctly with FastMCP's async loop by allowing Django's synchronous ORM in this local stdio server context.
Exception grouping fix: exceptions without a fingerprint are no longer hidden from the grouped Exceptions view.

What's New in v0.9.0¶

Sensitive-data masking: recursive, case-insensitive masking for tokens, passwords, API keys, cookies and related values.
Query EXPLAIN: inspect query plans from the query detail panel.
Request waterfall: see request query timing as a timeline.
Tags and tag search: attach and filter entries by operational tags.
Exception grouping: group identical exceptions by fingerprint.
Dashboard redesign: grouped sidebar, All Events, compact KPI strip, keyboard navigation and onboarding.
Faster Stats page: heavy sections now lazy-load.

What's New in v0.8.1¶

HTML Email Preview: Emails sent with EmailMultiAlternatives now show a Plain text / HTML preview tab switcher in the dashboard. The HTML body renders in a sandboxed iframe — great for testing email templates. See Email Preview.
MySQL max_allowed_packet fix: New BULK_CREATE_BATCH_SIZE config key prevents OperationalError (2006, 'Server has gone away') on requests that trigger thousands of SQL queries. See BULK_CREATE_BATCH_SIZE.

What's New in v0.8.0¶

External Storage Backends: Route all Orbit writes to a dedicated Django database alias — keep telemetry out of your app's main database. See Storage Backends.

What's New in v0.7.0¶

MCP Server: Connect Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, or any MCP-compatible AI assistant to your live Django telemetry. Ask questions like "Why is this endpoint slow?" directly against real data. See MCP Server.

What's New in v0.6.0¶

Transaction Watcher: Track database transactions (commits/rollbacks)
Storage Watcher: Monitor file operations (save, open, delete, exists)
Improved Summaries: More informative entry summaries with duration and sizes
Enhanced Analytics: Transaction and storage metrics in Stats Dashboard

What's New in v0.5.0¶

Jobs Watcher: Track Celery, Django-Q, RQ, APScheduler tasks
Redis Watcher: Monitor Redis operations
Gates Watcher: Audit permission checks
Stats Dashboard: Apdex, percentiles, interactive charts
N+1 Navigation: Click through duplicate queries