How to Debug with Time-Travel Replay

When an environment fails, debugging live infrastructure can alter state. MicroStax introduces Time-Travel Replay (Patent 08) by leveraging immutable Kubernetes Snapshot Closures to re-run environments with perfectly deterministic state.

1. Trigger an Immutable Snapshot

Whether done manually or triggered automatically on crash via a webhook, you must capture the state.

microstax env snapshot create my-failed-env --name "post-crash-closure"

2. Initiate the Replay

Once the closure is verified, you can restore a fresh sandbox from that exact microsecond.

Using the VS Code Extension

1. Open the MicroStax Environments panel.
2. Right-click my-failed-env (or its snapshot child node).
3. Select MicroStax: Replay Environment.
4. A new sandboxed namespace will spin up mimicking the exact data state, allowing you to attach standard debuggers.

Using the Dashboard

Navigate to the Environment detail page /environments/my-failed-env. At the bottom, click the TimeRail and select the node representing post-crash-closure. Click Replay from Node.

3. Clean up the Replay

Because Replays are fully isolated sandboxes, you can safely delete them once you've diagnosed the root cause without affecting the original baseline.

microstax env delete my-failed-env-replay-1