sentry issue explain

Get AI-powered root cause analysis for a Sentry issue using Seer AI

sentry issue explain

Get a root cause analysis for a Sentry issue using Seer AI. This command analyzes the issue and provides identified root causes, reproduction steps, and relevant code locations.

Usage

sentry issue explain <issue-id>

Issue ID Formats

The explain command accepts the same issue identifier formats as view:

# Explicit org + ID
sentry issue explain sentry/EXTENSION-7

# Project + suffix  
sentry issue explain cli-G

# Short ID (searches across orgs)
sentry issue explain CLI-G

# Suffix only (requires DSN context)
sentry issue explain G

# Numeric ID
sentry issue explain 123456789

Parameters

issue-id · string · required

Issue identifier in any supported format.

Flags

--force · boolean · default: "false"

Force a fresh analysis even if one already exists. Useful when issue context has changed.

Example:

sentry issue explain 123456789 --force

--json · boolean · default: "false"

Output results as JSON array of root causes.

Example:

sentry issue explain EXTENSION-7 --json

Examples

Basic Usage

# Analyze issue by numeric ID
sentry issue explain 123456789

# Analyze by short ID
sentry issue explain EXTENSION-7

# With explicit org
sentry issue explain sentry/CLI-G

Force Re-analysis

# Trigger fresh analysis
sentry issue explain 123456789 --force

JSON Output

# Export to JSON
sentry issue explain EXTENSION-7 --json > root-causes.json

# Process with jq
sentry issue explain CLI-G --json | jq '.[0].description'

Sample Output

Human-Readable Format

Analyzing issue... (this may take a few minutes)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Root Cause Analysis
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Root Cause #0:

The error occurs because the `processData` function attempts to call `.map()` 
on a variable that is undefined. This happens when the API response does not 
include the expected `users` array in the payload.

Reproduction Steps:
  1. Navigate to /dashboard in the application
  2. Ensure the external API endpoint returns a response without the 'users' field
  3. The application attempts to render the user list
  4. TypeError is thrown when calling users.map()

Relevant Code:
  File: src/components/UserList.js
  Line: 42
  Code: const userElements = users.map(user => renderUser(user));

Tip: To create a plan, run: sentry issue plan 123456789

JSON Format

[
  {
    "id": 0,
    "title": "Undefined variable access in processData",
    "description": "The error occurs because the `processData` function attempts to call `.map()` on a variable that is undefined. This happens when the API response does not include the expected `users` array in the payload.",
    "reproduction": [
      "Navigate to /dashboard in the application",
      "Ensure the external API endpoint returns a response without the 'users' field",
      "The application attempts to render the user list",
      "TypeError is thrown when calling users.map()"
    ],
    "code_context": {
      "file": "src/components/UserList.js",
      "line": 42,
      "snippet": "const userElements = users.map(user => renderUser(user));"
    }
  }
]

How It Works

1. Trigger Analysis: The command sends the issue to Seer AI for analysis
2. Poll Status: The CLI polls the analysis status every few seconds
3. Extract Root Causes: Once complete, root causes are extracted from the analysis steps
4. Display Results: Formatted output shows the identified causes with context

The analysis may take several minutes for complex issues. Progress is shown via a spinner (hidden in --json mode).

Requirements

Seer AI must be enabled for your organization. If Seer is not available, you’ll see an error with a link to enable it in your organization settings.

Prerequisites

• Seer AI enabled in organization settings
• Available Seer AI budget/quota
• Organization has AI features enabled

Common Errors

Seer not enabled:

Seer AI is not enabled for this organization.
Enable it at: https://sentry.io/settings/your-org/processing/ai-tools/

No budget:

Seer AI analysis quota exceeded. Check usage at:
https://sentry.io/settings/your-org/processing/ai-tools/

AI disabled in settings:

AI features are disabled for this organization.

Notes

• The first analysis of an issue takes longer as Seer examines code context, stack traces, and event patterns.
• Subsequent runs reuse cached analysis unless --force is specified.
• If multiple root causes are found, each is numbered (0, 1, 2, …) for reference in sentry issue plan --cause N.
• Organization context is required to access Seer AI. The command automatically resolves org from the issue ID.

See Also

• sentry issue plan - Generate a solution plan from root causes
• sentry issue view - View issue details
• sentry issue list - List issues from projects
• AI Debugging Guide - Complete guide to using Seer AI