Spotlight by Backplanes

Product Introduction

1. Definition: Spotlight by Backplanes is an AI agent observability and session analysis platform designed specifically for developers using AI coding assistants. It functions as a local CLI tool that automatically captures, analyzes, and reports on completed coding sessions from tools like Claude Code and Codex.
2. Core Value Proposition: Spotlight solves the fundamental problem of "black box" AI development by providing transparency into AI agent behavior. Its core purpose is to help engineering teams "get recursively better every session" by turning ephemeral AI interactions into actionable insights for security, efficiency, cost control, and team-wide learning, ultimately making AI agent usage measurable and improvable.

Main Features

1. AI Session Reports: Spotlight performs automated post-execution analysis of AI coding agent sessions. Using a locally installed CLI, it captures detailed telemetry from each session—including task description, duration, file modifications, commands executed, and external network calls. The core technology involves local session parsing and redaction; it strips PII and credentials before any data transmission. The report categorizes activities (e.g., "Credential access," "External service usage") and provides evaluative feedback, such as highlighting security anomalies (like accessing /etc/passwd) or noting best practices (e.g., "Tokens expire in 15 minutes"). This enables AI-assisted code review focused specifically on the AI's own contributions.
2. Organization & Team Reports: For engineering managers and team leads, Spotlight aggregates data from multiple agent sessions across the team into unified reports. This feature provides cross-cutting visibility into AI capacity allocation and operational patterns. Reports can be filtered by security, engineering efficiency, or spending, offering a centralized view of where and how AI tools are being utilized across the organization. It answers the managerial question: "Where is the team spending AI capacity?"
3. MCP & External Access Audit: A critical security and compliance feature, this module logs and presents every external domain and service an AI agent session communicated with. This includes API calls (e.g., to api.resend.com) and other outbound network requests. For CISOs and security teams, this provides essential visibility into data egress paths and third-party service dependencies introduced by AI agents, directly supporting policy enforcement and compliance auditing.
4. Zero-OAuth, Privacy-First Installation: The system employs a unique "install-once" authentication flow. Running the installation script authenticates via the user's browser to create a team account but does not require OAuth into Anthropic or OpenAI. The CLI operates by reading session logs only after they have ended and performs local redaction, ensuring that active coding context and sensitive credentials never leave the developer's machine unprocessed. This architecture prioritizes security and developer flow.

Problems Solved

1. Pain Point: The primary problem is the "invisibility" of AI agent work. When an AI agent runs for 45 minutes during a meeting, developers and managers have no standard way to audit what was done, what security risks were taken, or what efficiency gains were realized. This leads to unvetted AI-generated code, hidden security vulnerabilities (like unintended data exposure), and untracked API costs.
2. Target Audience:
   • Engineers & AI Builders: Individual developers using Claude Code/Codex who need to review their own agent sessions quickly, understand mistakes, and improve prompt engineering or workflow practices.
   • Engineering Managers: Team leads responsible for optimizing AI tool ROI, tracking team-wide AI adoption, and ensuring consistent code quality standards when AI agents are involved.
   • CFOs & Finance Leaders: Professionals tasked with managing AI spend, ROI analysis, and capacity planning across multiple teams and tools.
   • CISOs & Security Teams: Security officers requiring audit trails for external access, data egress, and policy compliance in an increasingly AI-driven development environment.
3. Use Cases:
   • Post-Incident AI Review: After a problematic deployment, using Spotlight to audit the AI agent session that contributed to the issue.
   • Security & Compliance Audit: Generating a quarterly report of all external domains contacted by AI agents to ensure compliance with data policies.
   • AI Cost Optimization: Analyzing team-wide reports to identify inefficient agent sessions and retrain teams on cost-effective AI usage patterns.
   • New Developer Onboarding: Having junior developers review reports from senior engineers' AI sessions to learn best practices for leveraging AI coding assistants.

Unique Advantages

1. Differentiation: Unlike traditional APM (Application Performance Monitoring) or CI/CD tools, Spotlight is purpose-built for the new layer of AI-generated code and AI-driven workflows. It does not monitor the deployed application but rather the development-time AI agent session. It also differentiates from simple log aggregators by providing semantic analysis and actionable recommendations specific to AI coding tasks (e.g., "Credential access" flagged as anomalous).
2. Key Innovation: The key innovation is its privacy-by-design, local-first analysis pipeline combined with zero-integration authentication. By not requiring direct API access to AI provider accounts and performing redaction locally, it solves the significant adoption barrier of security concerns. Furthermore, its focus on "recursive improvement"—using each session's data to inform better practices for the next—creates a continuous learning loop for both individual developers and organizations, moving beyond mere observation to active optimization.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. What AI coding agents does Spotlight support? Spotlight currently supports Claude Code and Codex. The development roadmap includes integration with other platforms like Cursor AI, Google's AI tools, and open-source alternatives such as OpenCode, indicating future expansion.
2. How does Spotlight handle sensitive data and credentials during session capture? Spotlight uses a privacy-first architecture. The CLI performs local redaction of PII and credentials before any data is transmitted off your machine. It only reads sessions after they are complete and does not require OAuth or direct access to your AI provider's account, keeping your active development environment secure.
3. Is there a cost for using Spotlight for my team? Spotlight is free for individual developers and teams. There is no trial period or seat limit for the core offering. For enterprise organizations needing advanced features like attribution, volume controls, or specific deployment requirements, Backplanes offers custom setup discussions.
4. How do I get started with Spotlight? Installation is a single command: $ curl -fsSL https://www.backplanes.com/spotlight/install.sh | sh. This command authenticates you via the browser and installs the CLI, which then begins auto-capturing sessions as they finish. Your first actionable report is generated after your next completed AI coding session.
5. What kind of actionable insights does a Spotlight report provide? A report provides categorized insights such as "Needs review" (flagging security anomalies like unexpected file access), "Best practice" notes (e.g., on token expiration), "External" service calls, and quantitative metrics like duration, file change count, and command executions. This allows you to focus on "what's worth keeping, what to fix, and where to save time" on the next run.