Error message and logs

An error message is the system's written report of what went wrong, and logs are the running record of what your project did over time. Together they are the first place you look when something breaks.

An error message is the system's written report of what went wrong, and logs are the running record of what your project did over time. The error names the failure and usually points at the line or step where it happened; the logs are the surrounding diary of requests, steps, and values that led up to it. Say a visitor clicks a password reset link and gets a blank page. The error message might read that an email setting was not found, and the logs above it show the reset request arriving, the lookup running, and the send step stopping when the key came back empty. You read the two together to move from "it broke" to "this specific step failed for this specific reason."

Builder example

When a deploy or a feature fails, the error and logs are what turn guessing into diagnosis. A to-do app that saves locally but loses items once it is deployed often has the answer waiting in the logs: a missing setting, a rejected request, or a timed-out call, each printed at the moment it happened. Rather than describing the symptom to your AI assistant, paste the exact error text and the surrounding log lines and ask it to explain the failure and propose a fix; specific evidence gets you a specific answer.

Common confusion: An error message reports a single failure at one moment, while logs are the continuous record of everything the project did, including normal activity. The error tells you what broke; the logs tell you the sequence and conditions that led there, which is why you read them together rather than treating either as the whole picture.