Monitoring Express, SDKs are good

We just launched a new way to manage logs in an express app. The setup is ridiculously simple.

initVigilant() automatically sends all your console.logs to Vigilant.

addLoggingMiddleware(app) creates pre-formatted logs for each request.

addExceptionMiddleware(app) alerts you when routes return exceptions.

So basically you add a few lines, and then you get a cool dashboard for debugging.

SDK is the way

Most observability tools traditionally require running an agent in a sidecar process. While effective, this approach goes against clear trends in the industry.

AI code editors are writing a lot of code these days. If you paste the integration example above into Cursor, it can one-shot the integration in 5 seconds.

Cloud platforms exploded in popularity. As they mature, developers spend less time on infra, and more time coding. This makes code-based integrations intuitive, while infrastructure-based integrations feel cumbersome and outdated.

Code libraries are exploding too. Most developers are basically addicted to pulling libraries with npm i library. Nothing else feels simpler.

We're designing Vigilant for people who build software today. Increasingly, that means being code-first, SDK-based, and avoiding infrastructure when we can.