Spotlight is Backplanes' first product for making local coding-agent work easier to inspect after the fact. The public page describes an installable CLI that watches completed Claude Code and Codex sessions, then turns each run into a short report covering what was built, which files changed, what commands ran, which external domains were reached, and where the agent may have drifted outside the task. That positions it less like a general APM suite and more like session observability for AI-assisted development work that is otherwise hidden in terminal scrollback.
The strongest workflow fit is post-session review. Engineers can use Spotlight to decide which agent outputs deserve a second look, security teams can inspect MCP and external access, and managers can see where AI capacity is being spent by team and tool. Backplanes says the CLI authenticates in the browser, starts capturing sessions as they finish, and applies local redaction for PII and credentials before anything leaves the laptop. The privacy notice still makes clear that service usage can involve agent/developer-tool information and customer-data agreements for business deployments, so sensitive teams should review the data path before rollout.
Spotlight is free for individuals and teams at launch, while larger organization rollouts are framed as contact-driven for attribution, volume, and specific controls. It currently supports Claude Code and Codex rather than every IDE or agent framework, so the best near-term fit is a team already using those terminal agents and wanting lightweight reports on scope drift, risky actions, external access, and spend signals. Broader observability, tracing, or hands-on code-quality claims should be left to follow-on reviews or comparisons once the product has more deployment history.
