TraceRoom
A collaborative incident investigation platform for organizing technical evidence, testing hypotheses, coordinating response tasks, reconstructing timelines, and producing structured post-mortems.
Product overview
Why this product exists.
TraceRoom is an in-development product direction for production-incident investigation. Its repository currently documents the intended product and stack, but does not yet contain a meaningful application MVP, so this case study presents planned scope rather than completed functionality.
Problem / motivation
During an incident, evidence is often fragmented across chat threads, log viewers, screenshots, and individual notes. The opportunity is a shared record that preserves what the team observed, considered, decided, and still needs to follow up.
Product experience
Key features.
- 01
Planned incident timelines with severity and investigation state
- 02
Planned artifacts for logs, stack traces, JSON, screenshots, and deployments
- 03
Planned hypotheses, comments, investigation tasks, and recorded decisions
- 04
Planned workspaces, role-based access, post-mortems, and action items
Under the surface
Architecture and technical challenges.
Architecture
- Planned React and TypeScript investigation workspace using Tailwind CSS and shadcn/ui
- Planned NestJS API using the Express adapter with authentication and authorization
- Planned MongoDB persistence through Mongoose and workspace-scoped roles
- Planned WebSocket collaboration and Docker-based local development
Challenges
- Keeping a high-volume evidence timeline readable during an active incident
- Separating observations, hypotheses, decisions, and confirmed root causes
- Designing real-time updates without losing ordering or authorship context
Technology stack
Delivery status
What exists today.
Planned
- — Authentication, authorization, workspaces, and role-based access
- — Incident timelines, technical artifacts, hypotheses, and response tasks
- — WebSocket collaboration, structured post-mortems, and Docker local setup
Interface
A closer look.
Honest edges
Limitations and what comes next.
Known limitations
- The public repository currently contains the initial product README but no application implementation or polished screenshots.
- Authentication, workspaces, incident workflows, real-time collaboration, and post-mortems are planned and are not represented as complete.
Future improvements
- Complete incident-room WebSocket synchronization
- Add post-mortem export and reusable action-item workflows
- Expand investigation permissions and audit history