Pino

Pino is the recommended logger provider: extremely fast structured JSON output in production, with optional pino-pretty colorised formatting for local dev.

The `LoggerType` interface

Every logger provider satisfies the same contract, so all log calls work identically regardless of which provider is active:

type LoggerType = {
  info: (message: string, meta?: Record<string, unknown>) => void;
  warn: (message: string, meta?: Record<string, unknown>) => void;
  error: (error: unknown, meta?: Record<string, unknown>) => void;
  getFeatureLogger: (feature: string) => FeatureLoggerType;
};

getFeatureLogger creates a child logger scoped to a named feature. Pino implements this as a true child logger with { feature } bound and a duration field (ms since the child was created) appended to every line:

const ftLogger = tools.logger.getFeatureLogger('subscriptionUpgrade');
ftLogger.info('Starting upgrade', { organizationId });
// ... do work ...
ftLogger.info('Upgrade complete', { plan });
// Both lines include: { feature: 'subscriptionUpgrade', duration: 42.3 }

Use getFeatureLogger for any operation that spans multiple log lines — it makes log correlation trivial in aggregators.

Why

Pino is one of the fastest Node.js loggers available — it serialises log lines to JSON with minimal overhead and integrates cleanly with log aggregators like Datadog, Logtail, or CloudWatch. The pretty: true flag activates pino-pretty for colorised, human-readable output during local development, while production stays machine-parseable JSON.

Setup

In apps/backend/package.json, ensure "tooling-logger-pino": "workspace:*" is listed under dependencies.
Run make deps-install.

In development.ts, set tools.logger:

logger: {
  client: LoggerClientType.PINO,
  pretty: true,
}

In production.ts, set tools.logger:

logger: {
  client: LoggerClientType.PINO,
  pretty: false,
}

Run make test module=tooling-logger-pino and make test module=backend.

Log levels

Method	When to use
`logger.info(message, meta)`	Successful operations, important lifecycle events
`logger.warn(message, meta)`	Expected failures, business-rule violations, degraded states
`logger.error(error, meta)`	Unexpected exceptions, system failures

Gotchas

pretty: true requires pino-pretty to be installed. It is a dependency of tooling-logger-pino, so it’s available automatically.
Pino serialises log arguments asynchronously in a worker thread. Very high-frequency logging (> 100k lines/sec) can cause slight buffering — this is normal.
Never set pretty: true in test.ts — it adds noise to test output. Leave it false or omit it entirely.

What’s next?

Console — the minimal fallback provider.
Configuration — switching pluggable tool implementations.
Tooling system — how loaders and workspace packages fit together.

Getting Started

Architecture

Frontend

Deployment

Quality

Reference

The `LoggerType` interface

Why

Setup

Log levels

Gotchas

What’s next?

​The LoggerType interface

​Why

​Setup

​Log levels

​Gotchas

​What’s next?

The `LoggerType` interface

Why

Setup

Log levels

Gotchas

What’s next?