hardware-logging

Structured, crash-aware serial logging for embedded boards — built so AI coding agents can debug firmware recursively.

hwlog runs a small daemon that owns your board's serial port and records everything to structured sessions on disk. Your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, anything) never touches the port — it queries the recording through bounded CLI commands or native MCP tools, flashes through a port-safe wrapper, and verifies behavior instead of assuming "it compiled" means "it works."

┌──────────┐  serial   ┌──────────────┐   JSONL    ┌─────────────────────┐
│  ESP32 / │ ────────► │ hwlog daemon │ ─────────► │  session on disk    │
│  any MCU │  ◄──────  │ (owns port)  │            │  logs · boots ·     │
└──────────┘   send    └──────┬───────┘            │  decoded crashes    │
                              │ pause/resume       └──────────┬──────────┘
                       ┌──────┴───────┐                       │ bounded queries
                       │ hwlog flash  │            ┌──────────┴──────────┐
                       │ -- idf.py …  │            │  coding agent       │
                       └──────────────┘            │  (CLI or MCP tools) │
                                                   └─────────────────────┘

Why

Wiring a coding agent to a dev board fails in predictable ways: blocking monitors hang the agent, flashing fights the monitor for the port (and looks exactly like a bricked board), ESP32-S3 native USB drops all output until DTR is asserted, ports renumber on replug, crashes scroll away before anyone reads them, and a raw log dump blows the agent's context window. hwlog packages the fixes — learned from real hardware incidents — into one tool.

Related MCP server: Firmware MCP Server

Features

• Persistent capture sessions — logs are recorded to disk continuously; the crash that happened while your agent was thinking is still there

• Structure at ingest — ANSI stripped; ESP-IDF and Arduino log formats parsed into {level, tag, msg, timestamp}; everything else passes through

• Boot-cycle segmentation — "show me logs since the last boot" is one flag (--boot -1); reboot loops are instantly visible in hwlog boots

• Crash reports, assembled and decoded — panics/watchdogs/heap corruption are detected, captured as complete multi-line artifacts, and symbolized with addr2line against ELFs archived at flash time

• Bounded, agent-budget-aware queries — tail limits, level/tag/grep filters, repeated-line collapse (heartbeat (×347)) so no query can flood a context window

• Flash-safe port arbitration — hwlog flash -- <cmd> pauses capture, runs your flasher, resumes, and archives the ELF

• Behavioral verification — hwlog wait --pattern "setup done" --timeout 20 gates the loop on observed behavior, with CI-friendly exit codes

• MCP server + bundled agent skill — hwlog mcp exposes everything as native agent tools; hwlog init installs a debug playbook (crash-signature triage, loop protocol) into your project

Works with anything that talks serial: ESP32 family first-class, plus RP2040, STM32, nRF, Arduino — identified by USB VID.

Installation

uv tool install hardware-logging   # or: pip install hardware-logging

Or run without installing: uvx --from hardware-logging hwlog ports

Quick Start

hwlog ports                     # find your board
hwlog start                     # background capture daemon (auto-detects the board)
hwlog flash -- idf.py flash     # flash through the wrapper (pauses capture, archives ELF)
hwlog wait --pattern "setup done" --timeout 20   # verify it actually booted
hwlog logs --boot -1 --tail 50  # structured logs from the latest boot
hwlog crashes --last            # full decoded crash artifact, if it crashed

For coding agents

hwlog init                      # install the agent skill + CLAUDE.md snippet

Or add the MCP server (Claude Code shown):

claude mcp add hardware-logging -- uvx --from hardware-logging hwlog mcp

Agents get query_logs, list_boots, get_crash, wait_for_pattern, send_to_device, capture_status — every tool bounded, structured, and safe to call in a loop.

The agent debug loop

1. hwlog start — capture runs continuously, owns the port

2. hwlog flash -- <cmd> — port-safe flashing, ELF archived for symbolization

3. hwlog wait --pattern <expected> — behavioral assertion, not compile-and-hope

4. hwlog logs / hwlog crashes --last — bounded evidence, decoded backtraces

5. Fix firmware, repeat

Documentation

Full docs in /docs: architecture · CLI reference · MCP server · agent workflow

License

MIT