rea/docs/web-network-captures.md

Historical web network captures

Use inspect_web_network_capture / inspect-web-network-capture to inspect retained producer evidence. This is an offline operation: recorded URLs are never fetched, and no browser or proxy listener is started.

rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/session.har har --json
rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/session.har har --record 2 --record 0 --json

{
  "name": "inspect_web_network_capture",
  "arguments": {
    "capture_path": "/absolute/session.har",
    "format": "har",
    "record_ordinals": [2, 0]
  }
}

Omit ordinals to return every record. Explicit selection preserves caller order and original zero-based producer ordinals; duplicate or out-of-range selections are input errors. Every record is validated before selection, so selecting one entry does not hide a malformed entry elsewhere.

For agent discovery over MCP, request detail: "summary". REA retains the complete selected Evidence in the session and returns identity and counts. Use normalized_result.parent_evidence_id with inspect_analysis_view:

{
  "source": {
    "kind": "retained-evidence",
    "evidence_id": "<parent_evidence_id>"
  },
  "view": { "kind": "capture", "detail": "preview", "offset": 0, "limit": 20 }
}

Preview pages select recorded HTTP headline fields, event names/times when present, original locations and byte descriptors; they omit headers, XML and payload content. Choose detail: "complete" in that view for exact record pages, including all sidecars. Offsets follow the parent's selected record order; producer ordinals remain unchanged. total_records counts the original capture while retained_records and page coverage count records in the parent. An exhausted page does not establish absence from unselected records.

Views do not reopen the file or rerun its decoder. They remain historical Evidence if the source changes or disappears; inspect the capture again to observe new bytes. The inspection tool's default detail: "complete" preserves existing inline delivery. For CLI use, save complete inspection JSON and pass it as inline Evidence to inspect-analysis-view; the same summary and capture page contracts apply. Large complete records can still exceed MCP's response budget; export the retained Evidence when a single record cannot fit.

If decoding completes before cancellation or private-root cleanup fails, the failure retains the completed capture as Evidence with the requested record selection and explicit sensitivity exclusions. Earlier decode failures remain primary. Failed cleanup stays linked to its exact owner, including through redaction, and its live status clears only after a confirmed retry.

Formats and upstream profiles

HAR uses unchanged har-schema@2.0.0 draft-06 schemas, ajv@8.20.0, ajv-formats@3.0.1, jsonc-parser@3.3.1 JSON visitor, and lossless-json@4.3.1 numeric representations, pinned in the npm lockfile. Only the HAR 1.2 profile is supported. Unknown extensions remain reported evidence. Duplicate object keys, including equal values and escaped spellings, are rejected before materialization. Prototype-named members such as __proto__ are preserved as ordinary own JSON members without prototype mutation. Original capture files remain unchanged. The observed mitmproxy 12.2.3 SaveHar profile can emit postData.text: null for a missing request body. REA preserves that reported null, omitting the optional field only from its validation copy for this exact producer profile; it does not invent an empty string or body bytes. The observed Playwright 1.58.2 profile can report a bracketed IPv6 serverIPAddress, forwarded from Chromium's remoteIPAddress through Playwright's HAR tracer. REA preserves the original spelling in reported Evidence and removes brackets only from its validation copy, only for this declared producer and a valid IPv6 literal. Invalid addresses, bracketed IPv4, ports and zone identifiers remain validation failures. Producer declarations do not authenticate origin.

Native mitmproxy decoding requires a caller-supplied mitmdump 12.2.3 on Linux. Set its absolute executable path:

REA_MITMDUMP_COMMAND=/absolute/mitmdump rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/session.mitm mitmproxy --json

REA does not install mitmproxy. Its owned process uses a private configuration directory, --no-server, and the unchanged upstream mitmproxy.io.tnetstring decoder. It does not run FlowReader migrations or convert native states to HAR. Raw IDs, state versions, flow types, backup states and unknown extensions are preserved without synthesizing connections, timestamps or content. The tested upstream source is tag v12.2.3, commit 6c09d56e4c29a92f5ad01b03199977584b8ea14f; other native tool versions return an explicit unsupported-profile diagnostic. Non-Linux native decoding is not supported by this adapter.

Reading Fiddler captures (.saz)

Fiddler Everywhere saves traffic in Session Archive Zip (.saz) files. Inspect native SAZ directly, without installing Fiddler or converting to HAR:

rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/session.saz saz --json
rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/session.saz saz --record 0 --json

MCP uses the same capture_path, format: "saz", and optional record_ordinals fields as the examples above. REA pairs raw/<id>_c.txt requests, _s.txt responses, and _m.xml metadata by filename stem. Archive member names identify the source; zero-based ordinals follow each session's first member in ZIP directory order, not its numeric ID or capture time.

HTTP fields and ordered duplicate headers are retained, with stored body bytes in binary sidecars. Bodies are not dechunked or decompressed. Metadata is an XML node tree; optional _w.txt and _g.txt files retain opaque WebSocket and gRPC message bytes. Missing members remain null, distinct from empty bodies. A zero-byte _c.txt or _s.txt member, which Fiddler writes for a session without that message, is also null and adds a record limitation. See Telerik's SAZ format reference.

Protobuf and gRPC bodies

Selecting record_ordinals (CLI --record) also decodes retained bodies with recognized protobuf or gRPC content types. Whole-capture inspection does not perform this extra work. The original binary sidecar, SHA-256 and producer ordinal remain the source; decoding adds flat body, frame and field facts.

Native gRPC admits only data-frame flags 0/1; gRPC-web additionally admits its terminal trailer frame. grpc-web-text supports independently padded base64 chunks. Its offsets refer to base64-decoded body bytes; other offsets refer to retained body bytes. Every field has a body-scoped field_id derived from its byte offset, a frame_index, and a parent_field_id for schema-driven nested messages or groups. Repeated field numbers remain separate occurrences.

Without a schema, varints and fixed-width values retain exact unsigned decimal representations. Length-delimited UTF-8, nested-message and packed readings are candidates; REA does not choose one or invent field names or signedness. Nested candidate ranges remain accessible without recursively expanding them. Malformed messages retain the parsed prefix and an exact error offset. Compressed frames and encoded HTTP bodies remain unknown; they are not silently treated as empty messages.

For schema interpretation, supply a local compiled FileDescriptorSet and its fully qualified message type. All imports must be included. REA never fetches schemas or executes the selected application. Descriptor identity and parser version remain in the body facts. Scalars, repeated numeric packing and nested messages are interpreted alongside the unchanged wire facts; disagreements remain explicit. Map semantics, extensions and required-field validation are unsupported. A supplied schema does not establish the sender's actual schema. An invalid nested interpretation records schema_status: "invalid-message" and schema_error locally; later outer fields remain available. Valid string contents, including a leading U+FEFF, are preserved.

# Compile your own schema with your existing protoc, including local imports:
protoc --include_imports --descriptor_set_out=/evidence/api.pb api.proto
rea inspect-web-network-capture /evidence/session.har har --record 3 \
  --protobuf-schema /evidence/api.pb --protobuf-message example.Response \
  --detail summary --evidence_output /evidence/session-evidence.json --json

MCP accepts the same choices as protobuf: {schema: {descriptor_set_path: "/evidence/api.pb", message_type: "example.Response"}}, with explicit record_ordinals. Optional body_pointers batch-select exact binary pointers; framing can explicitly select raw, grpc, grpc-web or grpc-web-text when MIME metadata is unavailable. CLI exposes --protobuf-body-pointer and --protobuf-framing. Filters never invent bytes excluded by source redaction. Decoding an extra base64 layer also checks explicit exclusions; newly recognized trailer credentials exclude the entire affected binary sidecar and its reported encoding, preserving a redaction coordinate instead of a credential digest. Credential inspection covers every selected body before descriptor reads or field expansion. Later capacity or schema failures can therefore retain the sanitized source even with explicit sensitivity options. If that source pass is interrupted, unchecked bodies are not published as partial Evidence. Framing overrides apply only to format-owned body coordinates and preserve exclusions for the transport declared in MIME metadata. Explicitly excluded or conflicting MIME metadata is not treated as absent: automatic framing leaves such a non-empty body uninterpreted, adds a record limitation and keeps protobuf_coverage partial unless framing is selected. Unknown or explicitly excluded HTTP coding metadata is not treated as absent: SAZ/native bodies remain opaque until identity coding is established. Raw header values and retained body bytes remain available in source Evidence. Skipping wire analysis still runs the independent credential check. If HTTP coding metadata is unavailable and that check cannot complete, the operation returns unavailable without publishing unchecked capture bodies as Evidence.

Use detail: "summary", then inspect_analysis_view with its retained parent:

{"kind":"protobuf","collection":"bodies","offset":0,"limit":16}
{"kind":"protobuf","collection":"frames","record_ordinals":[3],"offset":0,"limit":16}
{"kind":"protobuf","collection":"fields","record_ordinals":[3],"field_numbers":[1,4],"fields":["number","schema_name","schema_value"],"offset":0,"limit":32}

Filters intersect; an empty filter selects nothing. Field pages also accept field_ids, frame_indices and schema_names. Default field pages omit text, schema_value and enum alias inventories; select these columns when needed. Identity, source offset basis and body status survive column selection. Complete Evidence retains all decoded values, and ordinary capture previews expose counts. Page exhaustion covers retained facts only; a partial source does not establish absence.

Authenticated immutable parents reuse validation and the most recent field filter per capture. These caches live only with retained Evidence, hold references to existing facts and never reopen either file. Cached selector text is bounded by retained field cardinality; larger selections use an uncached scan. Mutable input is revalidated. The existing 96 MiB report budget includes the original decoder reply plus conservative charges for new facts, strings and descriptor expansion. The explicit protobuf_coverage reports selected and inspected record counts, preserving partial decoding through composed views. Capacity failure retains the source observation as partial Evidence; cancellation yields between bounded work batches. Real elapsed time and process-family memory still depend on the selected capture and schema.

Fiddler Everywhere MCP and public skills

For agent-driven traffic debugging, connect Everywhere's MCP server separately from REA. Run a current Everywhere release with MCP access (Trial, Pro, or higher), internet access, and a compatible MCP client. Use Settings > MCP Server > Coding agent, or Manual setup with the generated API key. The default endpoint is http://localhost:8868/mcp. See Telerik's MCP setup guide and agent-skills prerequisites.

Telerik's public skills cover installation (fiddler-download-setup), connection setup, and traffic analysis:

npx skills add telerik/fiddler-agent-tools --skill fiddler-mcp-setup
npx skills add telerik/fiddler-agent-tools --skill fiddler-traffic-debugging

After setup, reload the agent client and use the connected server's advertised tool names and schemas. Check status, list sessions, then inspect relevant session IDs. Set sessionsSource to LiveTraffic for HTTP(S) traffic or AgentCalls for enriched LLM calls; active filters affect the session list. For an existing run, skip the skill's pre-capture steps that replace process filters and clear sessions. The documented MCP session sources do not provide a saved-snapshot selector; use the SAZ workflow above for saved files. REA does not register or wrap the Fiddler MCP server.

Reading the evidence

• artifact identifies the caller-selected file and stable snapshot digest.
• records preserve producer order/ordinals and original JSON pointers, byte ranges, or SAZ member names. No live browser transaction or scenario IDs are invented.
• reported retains the producer's fields. HAR container metadata is returned separately, with log.entries replaced by null and records_pointer identifying the record collection. This is an inspection representation, not a reconstructed HAR file.
• numeric_literals preserve HAR number lexemes and native integer/float representations, including unsafe integers and non-finite native floats. Values that cannot be safely represented as JSON numbers are null in the reported view. Unsafe standard HAR numeric fields fail schema validation; unsafe extension numbers remain available through their sidecars.
• binary_fields retain exposed bytes, base64 and SHA-256 independently of declared sizes. Valid HAR content.encoding: "base64" is decoded exactly; producer-decoded Unicode text, missing text and unknown encodings do not establish original body bytes. Post-data parameters do not reconstruct a multipart body. Native byte fields also have an exact UTF-8 display view when valid; binary sidecars establish their actual representation. Native missing content and empty content remain distinct.
• redactions identify known transport authentication exclusions and explicit sensitive-value exclusions. Redacted byte fields retain neither original bytes nor their digest. Unknown extension names and token-looking query parameters do not establish sensitivity.

Mark sensitive literal string/UTF-8 byte values with MCP sensitive_values, or repeat CLI --sensitive-value. These declarations are never persisted in Evidence parameters; the count is retained. Explicit text/UTF-8 byte matches exclude the entire field with a reported null rather than substitute a text marker or rewrite payload bytes. This prevents replacement markers from reintroducing declared literals. The file digest identifies the original artifact unless it matches an explicit declaration; in that case artifact.sha256 and Evidence subject are null with an explanation. A sensitive property name excludes that entire property and its sidecars; a scope: "property-name" redaction points to its actual parent. No substitute property name or child pointer is invented. Omitted subtrees are still validated, including canonical HAR base64. Explicitly sensitive artifact paths are empty in Evidence and omitted from locations, while the original SHA-256 and size remain available unless the digest itself is explicitly excluded. Failure messages, diagnostics and cleanup resources follow the same explicit declarations without changing error types; sensitive issue pointers identify a real ancestor instead of a fabricated coordinate. Header/cookie authentication values and known transport URL userinfo are excluded structurally, including native backups. HAR redaction and API-surface projection share the same recorded-URL parser. Canonical userinfo spans are removed without rewriting the remaining source text. Credential-bearing spellings without a safe raw span, such as slashless or extra-slash HTTP URLs, are excluded as a whole transport field. Ordinary extension text and noncredential path/query values remain unchanged.

Generated free-text limitations follow the same literal declarations, including global, per-record and Evidence explanations added during projection. Contract field names, typed discriminators and exact decoder identities keep their canonical meanings; declarations do not rename formats or providers.

Historical evidence does not prove runtime attribution, execution or deployment authenticity. Mitmproxy messages are upstream-assembled messages, not recovered wire fragments. Native dictionary duplicate keys have the unchanged upstream decoder's last-value semantics; this adapter does not claim to recover discarded duplicates or the original numeric spelling of parsed native floats.

Derived API surface

Pass retained HAR Evidence to inspect_analysis_view with view: {"kind":"api-surface","offset":0,"limit":50}. Omitted offset and limit are 0 and 50. The view groups request lines by method, WHATWG URL origin and path template, sorted by origin, template and method. Query strings, fragments, credentials, headers and bodies are not copied into groups.

Select include_query_parameter_names: true in the view to include distinct observed query names per group. The default and explicit false omit the query_parameter_names field. Selected groups include an array of {name, record_ordinals} entries, sorted by Unicode code point; each name's ordinals follow the parent's selected record order and occur once per record. For /products?category=books&page=1 and /products?category=games&sort=price, names are category, page and sort. Query values and fragments are not copied into this inventory.

Names use WHATWG URLSearchParams form-query decoding: literal + becomes space, %2B becomes +, percent escapes decode as UTF-8, and empty names are retained. Empty query pairs are ignored. Original URLs stay in parent Evidence; name decoding does not normalize the recorded paths used for grouping. The inventory describes observed names, without inferring required parameters, value types or a complete API schema. Sensitive-parent refusals still apply.

Rule	Exact segment format	Placeholder
numeric	ASCII digits only	{numeric}
uuid	RFC 9562 textual UUID, any version, case-insensitive	{uuid}
hex	At least 32 hexadecimal digits	{hex}
iso-date	Valid calendar date YYYY-MM-DD	{iso-date}

Rules apply in table order to the recorded, still-encoded request path, read before WHATWG dot-segment removal, so /a/%2e%2e/admin and /admin stay distinct. Segment indexes start at zero after the leading slash. Each matched segment lists its observed literals and basis: "inferred". templated_groups counts templated groups across every page. Because paging follows the full grouping, every page is inferred Evidence when that count is nonzero, and derived Evidence only when no group was templated. Version prefixes, short opaque IDs and digit-bearing route names stay literal. Samples merge only when method, origin, and exact segment rules match. The view does not infer further cross-sample patterns.

Groups cite parent record ordinals and distinct statuses and MIME types (lowercase type/subtype without parameters). An invalid type/subtype essence is unknown; parameters do not affect this projection. Flags report single samples, mixed statuses or mixed content types. coverage pages groups; records separately reports examined, total and excluded parent records. Ordinal subsets carry a limitation. Null URLs are excluded as url-redacted; unparseable URLs, URLs without an origin, spellings without scheme://authority (such as https:host/path), and authorities containing a tab or newline as url-unparseable. Unavailable request objects or methods are explicitly excluded. Unavailable response fields, including HAR's status: 0 and an empty mimeType, remain unknown, not invented statuses or MIME types.

The view makes no handler-identity, schema or causality claim. It performs no network activity. Native mitmproxy, SAZ and qlog captures return a typed unsupported error. Parents inspected with sensitive_values, or whose Evidence does not record sensitive_value_count, return a typed unsupported error whose reason is the canonical token sensitive_values_unretained. The view would write path templates and limitation text that it cannot check against declarations the parent does not retain, so the refusal does not repeat declaration text.

One accumulator owns group identity, observed-value/status/MIME sets, ordinals, exclusions and deduplicated limitations. It scans path spans without splitting literal paths into arrays. Before schema parsing, it reserves the capture clone and validation scratch by walking the parent without cloning it. Inline requests borrow the Evidence value through CLI/MCP envelope validation; the application admits the entire portable envelope before authenticated parsing or hashing. An evidence-file source is read and authenticated first and then admitted like retained Evidence, so its strings are not charged as inline envelope text: a capture too large to project inline can be projected from its file. Before authentication REA checks that live heap headroom holds its copies of the parsed Evidence, and over MCP the read follows the request's cancellation. An invalid Evidence file returns EvidenceFileError with the selected path and content_issues relative to the file's JSON root; those locations do not refer to the request's source.path string. The envelope clone, hash scratch and capture clone stay charged during grouping. Temporary URL/path/MIME/query work and retained state must fit together within a 96 MiB projection representation budget. A whole group or merge is admitted before allocating its retained sets, map entries or array values. Fixed group storage, distinct text, exclusions and limitations count as well as matched segments. Per-record reservations are released after each record; repeated values do not accumulate another retained charge. Only the requested page is materialized as output groups. Opt-in query projection reserves parser tuples and the per-record name set before decoding, then admits distinct retained names and source ordinals before changing a group. Repeated names within a request retain that ordinal once.

The representation budget uses conservative storage and worst-case JSON-escaping allowances; it is not an enforced V8 heap or process-memory limit. It is separate from the decoder's actual reply-byte limit and MCP transport admission. Exceeding it returns resource_constraint without a partial view. Limitations on the parent envelope, capture and examined records are deduplicated onto the view. Portable captures must retain unique ordinals within their declared total; caller-selected subsets can preserve any requested ordinal order.

Environment manifest

Pass retained HAR Evidence to inspect_analysis_view with view: {"kind":"environment-manifest"} to project one application's recorded request lines into a replayable tool surface: the environment manifest that an agent environment later serves from retained Evidence. The view reuses the api-surface grouping, then keeps the groups on the primary origin, the origin with the most JSON-like records (application/json, application/*+json, text/plain, text/markdown), whose path starts with /api/ or /apis/ or whose content types are JSON-like, and the write groups answered with no body (a bodiless 204 DELETE). Every other group is listed under excluded with reason other-origin, ui-page-or-asset or non-json, and retained records without a usable request line are counted in a limitation.

The parent may instead be capture_browser_scenario Evidence whose scenario selected response bodies or header values: each network transaction is then one record, in request order, and the result names parent_operation: "capture_browser_scenario" with an empty artifact, since a scenario records no file. See agent environments.

{
  "name": "inspect_analysis_view",
  "arguments": {
    "source": { "kind": "retained-evidence", "evidence_id": "ev_..." },
    "view": {
      "kind": "environment-manifest",
      "template_rules": [
        "after-uid-literal",
        "opaque-token",
        "sibling-variance"
      ],
      "include_query_parameter_names": true
    }
  }
}

origin and name identify the environment; the name is the kebab-case primary host with dots and ports replaced by hyphens, grafana-example for http://grafana.example. Each tool carries a deterministic name, method, path_template, api_surface_template (the four-rule template of its earliest record), params, query_parameter_names, body_shape, statuses, content_types and record_ordinals. records lists one pointer {ordinal, method, path, status, content_type} per record a tool cites and never a header, cookie or body. Tools sort by template then method.

Without template_rules, every path_template equals the api-surface template and params carry the four format rules with names id, uuid, hash and date; a repeated name gets a numeric suffix. Opt-in rules apply only when listed, each at most once (a repeated rule is an invalid_request), in this order:

Rule	Applies to	Parameter
after-uid-literal	The literal segment right after a literal uid, unless it is a stop word	uid
opaque-token	A lowercase alphanumeric segment of twelve or more characters mixing letters and digits that is not a v1-style version	uid
sibling-pair-variance	Groups equal in method, origin and segment count that differ in two adjacent literals right after a plural literal at index 2 or later and followed by a literal, with at least three distinct pairs and both positions varying (/repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues); stop words and v1-style versions never qualify	singular plural literal plus _namespace, then _name
sibling-variance	Groups equal in method, origin and segment count that differ in one literal at index 2 or later; the siblings whose literal is identifier-like (a digit or :, or three or more hyphenated names under a plural literal) merge, never a stop word, and the other literals stay their own tools	singular previous literal plus _id, else id
prefix-variance	A literal at a position that another tool, of any method or segment count, templates by one of the rules above after the same preceding segments, when the literal is one of that parameter's observed values, carries a digit and has the length and character classes (digits, lower case, upper case, each other character) of one, or has the single length of eight or more characters every observed value has and only their character classes; stop words and v1-style versions never qualify, and tools that now match merge	the name of the parameter it shares

With sibling-variance selected, literal siblings within its comparison scope fold into existing opt-in parameters as observed values unless they are stop words. For example, select both opaque-token and sibling-variance so /api/folders/{uid} lists general beside the recorded token. With only opaque-token, /api/folders/general stays a separate literal tool. A position templated by one of the four format rules absorbs no literal, so /api/teams/{numeric} keeps its exact-format meaning and /api/teams/search stays its own tool. Opt-in placeholders use the parameter name; format-rule placeholders keep their api-surface spelling. Tool names are <method>_<literals> with api, apis, namespaces, default, v-prefixed version tokens and a uid literal before a parameter dropped, dotted literals cut to their first label, _by_<params> appended when parameters exist, sanitized to [a-z0-9_], at most 60 characters and made unique with numeric suffixes: get_dashboards_by_uid, get_plugins_settings_by_plugin_id.

prefix-variance runs last so it can share the parameters the other rules produce: with sibling-variance, a PATCH or DELETE of the one entity a session edited, /api/v1/collections/0RZ576QZQA5KG, becomes /api/v1/collections/{collection_id} beside the reads that varied there, and so do deeper routes such as /api/v1/collections/{collection_id}/books. Its parameter is labelled prefix-variance, unless a merged tool templated the position by its own rule. When parameters of different rules share a position, a literal shares the one that observed it, else the earliest one it is spelled like.

sibling-variance, sibling-pair-variance and prefix-variance compare routes of at most 32 segments; longer routes keep their grouped templates and the manifest says so in a limitation. body_shape is derived for POST, PUT and PATCH from the tool's earliest record when it carries an application/json or application/*+json request body: top-level keys and their JSON type names, never values and never nested structure; a body on a later record adds nothing. unknowns always states three facts: the authorization model, response semantics and state transitions are not established by a capture. templated_groups counts tools and excluded groups with a templated segment; whenever it is nonzero the Evidence is inferred, otherwise derived. The view performs no network activity and replays nothing. Native mitmproxy, SAZ and qlog captures, and parents inspected with sensitive_values, return the same typed unsupported errors as the api-surface view, including the canonical token sensitive_values_unretained. A capture_browser_scenario parent is not refused for declaring secrets: the capture redacted them as it recorded, a transaction whose URL was redacted is left unrepresented, and a response body keeps the capture's redaction markers, which a manifest limitation counts.

The manifest accumulator shares the api-surface admission model: the capture clone, the inline envelope (for an inline source), record pointers, groups, every route part, observed values, query names and body-shape keys are admitted before allocation, and each recorded body is charged as temporary bytes before it is parsed. Retained state and temporary work must fit together within the 96 MiB projection representation budget; exceeding it returns resource_constraint without a partial manifest. Name a large capture with {"kind": "evidence-file", "path": "/abs/capture.json"} rather than inline: response bodies the manifest never reads are then charged once per value in the capture clone, not per character. A capture_browser_scenario parent is also charged, before validation, for checking its largest body and for the decoded text of its request bodies.

Environment state

Pass the same parent to inspect_analysis_view with view: {"kind":"environment-state"} to extract the initial state the capture's reads observed, and a render plan per read tool that reproduces those reads from it. Where the environment manifest names an application's tools, the state holds its data: entities by type and identity, plus documents for reads that are not entities. Use the template_rules of the manifest the state accompanies so tool names match; the view groups records the same way.

{
  "name": "inspect_analysis_view",
  "arguments": {
    "source": { "kind": "retained-evidence", "evidence_id": "ev_..." },
    "view": {
      "kind": "environment-state",
      "template_rules": [
        "after-uid-literal",
        "opaque-token",
        "sibling-variance"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Records on the primary origin are ordered by recorded start time, or by record order when any start time is missing (timeline), as for a capture_browser_scenario parent. A POST, PUT, PATCH or DELETE with a 2xx or 3xx status, or no status, may change state, unless it is a POST whose path has a segment such as search, query, list, find, fuzzy, count or stats, which queries state instead. A type's state comes from its successful reads that finished before the first such write under the same root: the path's API base (the literal segments every tool sharing its first segment has), any v1-style version segments, then one more segment. A read that overlaps that write in time is left out. A write whose URL a scenario redacted has an unknown target, so it ends the state of every type, and a limitation counts such writes. Values from a capture_browser_scenario parent keep the capture's redaction markers in place of declared secrets; the state is not refused for them, as the manifest is not.

Each GET tool whose template ends in a parameter is an item tool, and its type's collection_template is the template without that parameter; any other GET tool is a list tool of its own template. Empty segments are ignored, so a trailing slash names the same collection. An item tool proves its type's id_field when every initial response carries the requested path value in the same field of one entity object (id_basis: "path-parameter"). The object is the response itself or one wrapper member; failing both, it is the only element of a one-element array at the root (pointer /0) or in one member (/<member>/0), as in {"posts":[{...}]} or {"data":[{...}]}, provided one of the identity names below repeats the value, since a filtered list may also answer with one element that repeats its parent's value. Otherwise the field is the first of id, uid, uuid, _id, ID, UID, Id, guid, key, slug and name that every listed item carries as a distinct string or number; when none does, it is the first key of the first listed item, in its order, whose name ends in Id or _id (such as orgId or user_id), that every item carries as a distinct string or number, and that at least one initial response shows distinct across two or more items (id_basis: "field-name"). A single listed item is distinct from nothing, and its suffix-named fields are often foreign keys, so a list that only ever held one item is left to a document. Empty initial lists constrain no field. A list is the response array, or the one array of objects in an envelope that is not itself an entity, preferring an array whose items an identity name identifies, then an array of two or more items a suffix-named field identifies.

entities merge every initial observation of one identity within one collection path: an item view's latest values win over a list view's, a view whose latest values differ keeps them in view_fields, and a field whose value changed between one tool's observations with no recorded write between is named in the type's volatile_fields, keeping the latest value. A value that changed across a write under another root may be that write's effect, so every tool of its type is a recorded view with reason fields-differ; so is a value one tool read before a write and another tool read after it. Repeated reads of one full request line also keep the type recorded when list membership changes across a write, including transitions to or from an empty list, or when entity fields are added or removed. Different query strings remain distinct request lines. Sparse responses do not erase the last observation of a field supplied by another request line. Entities are ordered by type, collection and first sighting; that order is a list's state order. Every entity cites its record_ordinals.

views lists one plan per read tool in tool order:

Shape	Plan
item	The entity object at pointer (the root, one member, or /0 or /<member>/0), the ordered fields the view shows and the required_fields every recording had, and envelope_ordinal: the recording whose response, with the entity replaced, every item response shares
list	The array at pointer, its fields, membership (all: every entity of the collection in state order, when each recording listed exactly that, had no query or only paging parameters (limit, offset, page, per_page, perpage, page_size, pagesize, size, start, _start, _end), no item-total member (total, count, totalCount, item_count, totalcount, itemcount, numberOfElements, but not total_pages or per_page; a number or a string of digits) differing from the number listed, and no has_more, next or next-page token member set; recorded: the entities each recording listed, except on the lines all_record_ordinals names, which each meet those conditions on their own and list every entity), and counters that equal the number listed
document	The latest initial value of a list tool whose responses hold no identified list, when its initial reads share one request line; held in documents with that path, whether or not the capture writes it, unless its value changed across any recorded write between those reads (fields-differ)
recorded	A reason the tool replays its recordings instead

An item or list plan is kept only when it reproduces the latest initial recording of each request line from the state, comparing JSON values without regard to member order; a volatile field compares its recorded value. Each plan lists the checked_record_ordinals. Otherwise the tool is a recorded view with reason envelope-varies, fields-differ or list-differs; the other reasons are query-body (a query POST), no-init-recording, body-unusable, no-identity (an item read without a proved identity), path-varies (another read under more than one path, as a template with a parameter before its end), query-varies (another read of one path under more than one query) and rendered-oversize (a document value whose JSON renders to more than 256 KiB). A document holds the value of its one path, so for such a template it says nothing about the template's other paths. A body is usable when its content type is JSON-like, it is UTF-8 text of at most 256 KiB, every number survives native conversion exactly, and no member is named __proto__.

A list view also learns, from its checked lines that do not list the whole collection, what each query parameter does, and names the result in query. Each such line is explained by the first combination of roles that lists exactly what it recorded from the collection's initial entities:

Role	Parameter	Effect
filter	any, on a field every listed item holds the value in	entities whose field equals the value as text, or whose array field holds it directly or as an object's id, slug or name
search	q, query, search, searchTerm, term, keyword(s)	entities with one of fields containing the value, ignoring case; the fields are those it matched in the listed items, URLs only where nothing else matched
sort	order, orderBy, ordering, sort, sortBy (and _by spellings)	ordered by the field the value names (name, -name, name:desc, name-ASC): numbers by value, text ignoring case, null last ascending, ties in state order
direction	dir, direction, order, orderDirection, sortDir, sortOrder with asc or desc	the sort's direction
limit	limit, per_page, perPage, page_size, size, count, take, itemsPerPage	page size; zero or a negative value lists every match
offset	offset, start, _start, skip	matches skipped before the page
page	page	page number, counted from first (1 or 0, whichever explains the line)
inert	any	changes nothing for its recorded values; other values are not computed

Lines that disagree on a parameter's role drop it, inert values gather and search fields unite. query.record_ordinals are the lines the merged roles reproduce, envelope and fields included, and query.totals the envelope members that count every match before paging on each of them (a number-of-items member counts the page). The roles are inferences from the recorded lines; a line they do not reproduce keeps its recorded members.

writes lists one plan per tool whose request may change state, in tool order. Its effect is create for a POST to a type's collection_template, update for a PUT, PATCH or POST to that template plus one trailing parameter, delete for a DELETE to it, document for a PUT, PATCH or POST to a document's path, and otherwise none with reason no-state-target. A plan is built from the tool's first successful call: its request body must be a usable JSON object (as response bodies are usable), and the written entity must show in that call's response or in a later read before the next write. Each field of a created entity gets the first rule that explains it: generated identity (a sequence, UUID or token, by the recorded value's shape), echo of a body member, copy of a body string of 8 or more characters, a path value, a slug of a body member, a clock value within 10 minutes of the request in its recorded format, a sequence one past the largest value of its collection or type, a unique UUID, or a template around a generated value; other fields keep the observed value. An update's members echo when stored as sent; a member stored differently is accepted only with its recorded value (body.fixed) and stores the value the call that showed it recorded (the value of its constant rule), and a field it changed without sending must be a clock, an increment or a slug, or the plan is unexplained-change; an increment or slug must hold for every call of the tool. Every member the first call sent is required, except by PATCH and POST updates.

A read on a line query answers is checked against the query evaluated over the replayed state. It covers the collection only when every parameter sorts or pages and the answer holds every match; otherwise it covers the entities it lists, and those the line or the read listed that the state no longer holds.

The view then replays the timeline on a copy of the initial state. Modelled writes apply their effect; only a 2xx write is modelled or an example, and any other write (a redirect, an unanswered or unmodelled one) leaves the entity below whose item path it wrote unknown until a read shows it again (a whole collection when the path names no held entity), and taints what it wrote at or above. A read the served environment would answer from the state is compared with its recording as the read plans are, as the whole response it would serve: the entity or list rendered into the envelope of the item view's or the line's base recording, with the members the state still holds. A 400, 404 or 410 (or a null body) agrees with an entity the copy does not hold. A match confirms the writes that changed its entity or collection since it was last read, less those whose entity a read since showed absent, which no longer count for the collection; a mismatch contradicts them, or, when an unmodelled write came after them, is checked only on the members they sent; a mismatch no write explains marks the related writes since as side-effect. A plan is served when a read confirmed it and none contradicted it; otherwise its reason is the first of its build reason (no-call, body-unusable, no-observation, unexplained-change), contradicted (with contradicted_by), side-effect, unconfirmed and incomplete-entities (an update or delete that answers with the entity, when no initial entity holds every field its recorded answer shows, counting for an update the fields its rules write, so it could answer only for entities the environment created). checked_record_ordinals lists the confirming reads, insert places created entities (sorted by a field the collection's recorded order shows, else last), and write_clock is the end of the last timed record, to the next second.

Values in the state are recorded data, so the view refuses the same parents as the manifest, including those inspected with sensitive_values, and a capture_browser_scenario parent must have selected response bodies. Types and identity are inferences, so the Evidence is always inferred. unknowns states that the state establishes no authorization model, no way the application computes responses or derived values, and write effects only as modelled from recorded calls. The state accumulator charges the manifest's admission and grouping, every record line, each body as temporary bytes before it is decoded and parsed, and every value it keeps, within the same 96 MiB budget. Documents hold whole recorded response values whose recorded text and rendered JSON are each at most 256 KiB, so a capture with many read-only paths yields a correspondingly larger state result. The view performs no network activity and serves nothing; rea environment-serve derives it from the capture at startup, serves read tools and the served write plans from it and loads replacement states through the AgentEnv data plane, as serve from the state describes.

Resource and lifecycle boundaries

Complete evidence has a 32 MiB input, 96 MiB decoder reply and 64-level nesting budget. Those budgets have no runtime override. capture_timeout_ms does not raise them. Exceeding a budget returns no partial success. Oversized selected captures return an input error identifying capture_path and the byte budget; owned reply/output failures remain output or provider errors. HAR, SAZ and qlog run in an owned Node old-generation heap with one V8 worker. REA_CAPTURE_DECODER_OLD_GENERATION_MIB is a decimal integer of mebibytes from 8 to 16384. Unset uses 192, the previous constant. Invalid values fail configuration and name the setting; they do not fall back to 192. The setting is read from the environment that starts REA, so a change needs a restart. A memory failure names the effective mebibytes, whether they came from the default or the setting, the default, the floor, and the maximum. The decoder passes that value as --max-old-space-size and removes inherited NODE_OPTIONS, so additional host memory and NODE_OPTIONS do not raise the heap. The 8 MiB semi-space stays fixed; a smaller old generation aborts Node during startup instead of enforcing a limit. Mitmproxy decoding applies Linux limits of 768 MiB address space, 30 seconds CPU and 96 MiB file output; both commands use capture_timeout_ms (default 30000) and independently supervised process cleanup. Owned decoder diagnostics retain at most 1 MiB across stdout and stderr; the collector drops overflow as it arrives, reports the limit failure and verifies cleanup. Heap limits alone do not establish aggregate RSS limits. SAZ and qlog refuse decoding when neither a Node heap limit nor a Windows Job Object bound can be enforced. Existing HAR availability is preserved. When REA runs on Bun, the HAR/SAZ/qlog decoder runs on Bun, which ignores these V8 heap flags; its limitations and resource failures then omit the V8 heap sizes. On Windows, the decoder's owned Job Object instead limits its committed memory to the effective REA_CAPTURE_DECODER_OLD_GENERATION_MIB value plus a 512 MiB reserve for Bun itself. The default 192 MiB setting therefore yields 704 MiB. The limitations state that limit, and reaching it returns resource_constraint with process_memory_limit_bytes, whatever exit status Bun reports. Other Bun hosts enforce no decoder heap limit, so raising the setting does not bound them.

Observed decoder memory exhaustion returns resource_constraint, with the selected capture, applicable limits and retained process diagnostics. Raising host memory or NODE_OPTIONS does not raise the old-generation heap. Set REA_CAPTURE_DECODER_OLD_GENERATION_MIB and restart REA. Record selection happens after complete decoding and does not reduce that workload. Use a smaller capture exported by its producer or another decoder with sufficient capacity, retaining the original for provenance. Subsets do not establish complete-capture coverage. Repeating the same workload or running provider health diagnostics does not resolve the heap constraint.

Stable regular-file reads reject symlinks, replacement and concurrent changes. Private snapshots, declarations and tool configuration are removed before the result returns. Cleanup uncertainty retains the selected capture, resource and original failure information. The original capture is never changed.

Excluded coordinates and read failures

Explicitly marked values also exclude matching source coordinates and their sidecars. A hidden record coordinate is reported as location.kind: "unknown"; REA does not invent a replacement pointer. Original record ordinals and artifact digests remain available.

Host filesystem read denials return code: "access_denied", category: "unavailable", the actual EACCES/EPERM code and read-access guidance. Missing files remain input failures. Cleanup failures retain the prior structured error, including its input constraints or provider diagnostics, with explicitly marked text excluded.

An observed replacement or in-place change during stable artifact acquisition returns code: "artifact_changed", category: "integrity_mismatch" and retryable: true, retaining the selected path and reader's reason. Wait until the capture file is stable before retrying. No unstable snapshot is decoded. Command cleanup failures retain the original status and both diagnostic streams; the decoder's ownership preparation receives the same cancellation signal.

MCP advertises the same strict named input contract used by the application. Historical inspection delegates argument validation to that shared application boundary so accepted explicit-sensitive declarations also cover invalid argument names and other correction details. The SDK receives raw arguments through its Standard Schema interface; malformed inputs still fail before decoder or filesystem effects and return the normal structured REA error. Protocol-envelope validation remains owned by MCP.

Retained aioquic qlog

Select format: "qlog" through inspect_web_network_capture, or:

rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/origin.qlog qlog --json
rea inspect-web-network-capture /absolute/origin.qlog qlog --record 95 --record 0 --json

The initial profile is aioquic 1.5.0, JSON qlog 0.3: one JSON object with qlog_format: "JSON", qlog_version: "0.3", traces containing object events with name, finite numeric time and object data. JSON-SEQ, JSONL, columnar array events and other versions are unsupported. Duplicate JSON members, malformed UTF-8, invalid interpreted QUIC integers and excessive nesting fail without partial success, including in events outside the selected ordinals. Well-formed event subsets and missing frame metadata remain inspectable. Unknown extensions are retained; this is not validation of every qlog schema.

Choosing the format selects the interpretation profile; the file does not necessarily report or authenticate an aioquic version. The profile's clock uses Unix-epoch milliseconds, verified in aioquic 1.5.0's QuicLoggerTrace log_event/encode_time. The qlog.clock.basis and Evidence analysis profile state that assumption explicitly. Numeric lexemes survive independently of safe JSON-number projections; decimal spelling does not establish physical clock precision or monotonicity.

Every event has a global ordinal from trace/event source traversal and its original /traces/T/events/E pointer. This order is not a global time sort. Trace index and the selected artifact identify a connection observation; reported ODCID is preserved without claiming global uniqueness. Streams are scoped by trace, stream ID and sent/received direction. Control/QPACK streams are retained, so counting streams does not count HTTP requests.

qlog is a typed facet required exactly for this format. Its scope is all-recorded-events-before-selection: selection changes returned event records while facts cite the original ordinals across the entire recorded file. The container retains trace metadata with each events array replaced by null; there is no single events pointer shared by all traces.

Fact	Basis and limits
Original event and loss declaration	Observed endpoint report; recovery:packet_lost does not prove actual network loss. Missing packet number/type remains unknown.
STREAM ranges and byte totals	Derived per trace and direction from reported offsets and lengths using exact integer arithmetic. unique_bytes unions intervals; frame_length_sum includes overlaps; repeated_bytes is their difference. Overlap alone does not prove retransmission or equal contents.
FIN final sizes	Reported offset plus length where FIN is true; multiple conflicting sizes remain visible. A final size does not establish complete coverage or a received body.
Incomplete fact records	Ordinals with omitted/redacted interpretable frame metadata; usable fields in other records survive. An empty list does not establish complete logging or capture.
HTTP bodies and causality	body_bytes: "not-reported"; lengths and headers are metadata, with no reconstructed body, hash, timing causality or live process attribution.

QUIC integer fields interpreted here accept exact nonnegative JSON integer values through 2^62 - 1, including equivalent exponent notation. Offsets plus lengths must fit that range. Derived sums are decimal strings and are not rounded to JavaScript numbers. A missing offset is unknown, never defaulted to zero. Ranges can start above zero or contain gaps. Packet headers, HTTP events, raw lengths and unknown extensions remain producer evidence rather than being normalized into invented HAR requests.

The adapter excludes authorization/proxy authorization/cookie/set-cookie values in known HTTP frame events, reset tokens in transport parameters and NEW_CONNECTION_ID frames, and NEW_TOKEN frame tokens. Known URL header userinfo and explicit sensitive values follow the shared exclusions. Ordinary extension fields and token-looking query text remain retained. Explicit declarations also cover normalized numeric projections, derived totals and trace pointers; facts that cannot be safely shown are omitted with incomplete-record coordinates. No keylog, PCAP, live URL or recorded target is opened by the qlog decoder.

To repeat the real-provider lane with local caller-supplied evidence from the educational aioquic 1.5.0 experiment (one origin trace, known 32,803-byte stream coverage and one 1,169-byte repeated range in the loss case):

npm run verify:web:qlog -- /absolute/control/origin.qlog /absolute/loss/origin.qlog /absolute/new-report.json

This lane checks built CLI/stdio MCP parity, SDK-converted JSON Schemas, artifact digests, original event count, selection scope, retained parent lookup, credential exclusions and the known control/loss facts. The report is created exclusively and contains no keys or captured credential values. It is a fixture-specific verification, not a general loss detector. CI uses synthetic format inputs for malformed cases and limits; those tests do not establish producer provenance. PCAP parsing and correlation remain outside this stage.

Focused qlog views

Use MCP inspect_web_network_capture with format: "qlog", detail: "summary" for identity, profile, scope and retained-fact counts. Then pass its normalized_result.parent_evidence_id to inspect_analysis_view as a retained-evidence source.

{"kind":"qlog","facet":"traces","offset":0,"limit":10}
{"kind":"qlog","facet":"streams","trace_index":0,"offset":0,"limit":10}
{"kind":"qlog","facet":"contributions","trace_index":0,"stream_id":"0","direction":"sent","offset":0,"limit":20}

Trace pages omit nested lists and give their counts. Stream pages preserve exact byte totals but omit contributions, ranges and final-size lists. For those lists select contributions, ranges or final-sizes with all three stream selectors. loss-declarations and incomplete-records need only trace_index. Offsets count rows in that retained facet; defaults are 0 and 64. Missing or ambiguous selectors fail rather than choosing a connection.

These views page already interpreted facts without decoding again or opening the source, and work after its deletion. Facts still cover all recorded events before parent record selection. Their exhaustion does not prove logging or network completeness. Event preview/complete pages remain available through kind capture, with original numeric lexemes and producer ordinals preserved.