motel-debug

motel-debug is a skill for Claude Code, Codex from kitlangton/motel. It costs 78 tokens per session (2,141 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A debugging workflow that uses motel, a local server for collecting and querying OpenTelemetry traces and logs. Traces show how a request moves through an application, while logs record events during execution.

In plain words
What is it for?
Checking motel, sending application telemetry to it, querying traces and logs, adding temporary debugging instrumentation, and diagnosing runtime behavior.
Why use it?
Code inspection alone can lead to guesses about runtime failures. Actual traces and logs provide evidence about what happened while the application was running.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Written for no agent in particular: nothing here depends on one.

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kitlangton/motel/motel-debug
Any agent
npx skills add kitlangton/motel --skill motel-debug
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kitlangton/motel

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for motel-debug

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kitlangton/motel/motel-debug.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kitlangton/motel/motel-debug)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kitlangton/motel/motel-debug"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kitlangton/motel/motel-debug.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 78 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,141 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 1 finding. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00078 $0.02141
Opus 5 $0.00039 $0.01071
Sonnet 5 $0.00016 $0.00428
Haiku 4.5 $0.00008 $0.00214

Measured 6d ago against content hash 000026c8ee66, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-06, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

motel-debug scanned grade A with 1 finding against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 6d ago.

The scan reads SKILL.md. This mod also ships 1 executable file (scripts/clear-motel-debug.ts), listed below but not scanned — reading those needs a real analyzer, not pattern matching.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

- If reproduction is straightforward (CLI command, curl, simple script), write and run it yourself
skills/motel-debug/SKILL.md · 204 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 204 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Motel Debug

You are in debug mode. Debug with runtime evidence, not guesswork.

Agents guess based on code alone. You need actual runtime data. Motel is the local OpenTelemetry server that collects traces and logs — use it as your evidence loop.

Default local server details:

  • Base URL: http://127.0.0.1:27686
  • OTLP traces: POST /v1/traces
  • OTLP logs: POST /v1/logs
  • Query API: GET /api/*
  • OpenAPI: GET /openapi.json
  • Header: Content-Type: application/json
  • Auth: none by default

If the user provides a different motel URL, use that instead of the default.

Workflow

1. Verify motel is running — and start it if not

Check GET /api/health. If it returns 200, continue.

If it fails (connection refused, timeout, non-200), motel isn't running. Start it as a background daemon — do not launch the TUI, which is interactive and will block your shell:

motel start

motel start ensures the machine-global managed daemon is running, writes runtime files under ${XDG_STATE_HOME:-~/.local/state}/motel/, and returns a JSON status blob. It is idempotent and shared across local projects. If motel isn't on PATH, fall back to bunx @kitlangton/motel start.

After starting, re-check GET /api/health (may take 1–2s to become ready). If it still fails, read ${XDG_STATE_HOME:-~/.local/state}/motel/daemon.log for the error and surface it to the user.

Other lifecycle commands, for reference:

motel status   # JSON status (running? pid? originating workdir?)
motel stop     # stop the shared managed daemon for all local projects

Discover reporting services with GET /api/services when needed.

2. Generate hypotheses

Before touching any code, generate 3-5 specific hypotheses about why the bug occurs. Be precise — "the cache key doesn't include the user ID" is better than "something is wrong with caching."

3. Instrument with tagged debug blocks

Add the minimum instrumentation needed to confirm or reject all hypotheses in parallel. Every debug block must:

Read the full file on GitHub · 204 lines

Files

What ships with it

2 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 6d ago First seen · 204 lines · 78 tokens per session scan A 000026c8ee66

Subscribe to this mod's changes

motel-debug is a skill published in the GitHub repository kitlangton/motel (285 stars, last pushed 3d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 78 tokens to every session and 2,141 once invoked, about $0.0004 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 1 finding (makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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