Reticle Docs: verification for AI coding agents

reticle_console is not advertised. The default surface is the merged ten, so an agent does not see this name. Call reticle_observe { action: "console" } instead. Everything below describes what that call does; only the spelling changed. A call to the old name is answered with the new one, but an allowedTools allowlist or an MCP permission rule naming it refuses before Reticle is asked.

reticle_observe { action: "console" } returns the app’s console log, filtered by level, and tells you whether an empty result is a real reading or a missing one. Reach for it as the fast triage read after something goes wrong, and assert { "kind": "console", "absent": true } when you want a clean console to be part of the pass.

{ "limit": 3 }

Real response from a page with a clean console:

{
  "logs": [],
  "buffer": {
    "held": 535,
    "dropped": 10,
    "note": "event buffer evicted older events (age/size cap): a negative result here may be a false negative; the evidence may have expired. Grade sooner or widen the buffer."
  },
  "observed": true,
  "note": "no console lines; the observation ran and found none, which is a result, not a missing reading",
  "cost": { "bytes": 338, "tokens": 85 }
}

The empty result is the interesting one

An empty array is ambiguous in almost every tool that returns one. Did nothing happen, or did the observation not run? Reticle answers both:

observed: true with that note. The observation ran and genuinely found nothing. You may treat a clean console as a fact.
buffer.dropped: 10, older events were evicted. If you are asking about something from a while ago, the honest answer is “not in what I still have”, not “it didn’t happen”.

Read both fields together. observed: true with a non-zero dropped count means recently clean, which is usually what you wanted but is not the same as always clean.

Arguments

Argument	What it does
`level`	`log` · `warn` · `error` · `info`
`limit`	Most recent N (default 200). Older matches are dropped and counted
`actionId`	Only lines attributed to one action
`since` / `until`	Cursors from a prior act

The check worth making by default

Plenty of features “work” while quietly throwing. Assert the clean console as part of the action rather than checking afterwards:

{ "ref": "e605", "action": "click", "until": { "kind": "console", "absent": true } }

That fails if the click succeeds and logs an error, which is exactly the case a human reviewer tends to wave through.

level: "error" is the fast triage read. If it comes back empty with observed: true, stop looking at the console and go look at reticle_observe { action: "network" } or reticle_look { action: "state" } instead. That is a real capture from this fixture: {"logs":[],"observed":true,"cost":{"bytes":337,"tokens":85}}, eighty-five tokens to rule out a whole class of bug.

Last modified on October 12, 2026

Tools

Beyond the loop

CLI commands

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Grammar

Long form

reticle_console

The empty result is the interesting one

Arguments

The check worth making by default

​The empty result is the interesting one

​Arguments

​The check worth making by default

The empty result is the interesting one

Arguments

The check worth making by default