AI-Native Reliability Engineering
Lightrun is the foundation for software reliability across the SDLC, from code to production,
in the era of AI-accelerated engineering.
Every environment Instrument and validate behavior across dev, QA, staging, and production.
Every architecture Governed workflows support Kubernetes, serverless, and legacy deployments
Every pipeline Validate CI runs, troubleshoot flaky tests, and find slow stages live or async.
Safe runtime instrumentation without redeployment
Lightrun’s patented architecture ensures you never have to choose between speed and stability.
Isolated Sandbox
Instrumentation runs in an isolated sandbox outside execution paths. Logs, metrics, and traces never pause threads or change runtime state.
Secure by design
Automated sensitive data redaction and code exclusion, allows engineers and AI agents to instrument without accessing confidential data.
Enterprise ready
Secure at scale with RBAC, SSO, full audit trails, and automated PII redaction provide total control over all human and AI activity.
Powered by the Runtime Context Engine
Fully integrable, it instruments what AI cannot see to provide the complete visibility and context needed to validate behavior at the code level.
How Lightrun works
Lightrun connects engineers and AI assistants to live applications in a controlled, production-safe way.
The platform combines a management control plane, runtime agents, and client interfaces.
Lightrun Management Server
The control plane for governed runtime access.
The Management Server brokers all activity between users, AI agents, and workloads.
It validates identity, enforces guardrails, and ensures that no client ever connects directly to a running service.
- Governs all instrumentation policies
- Handles identity and access
- Mediates IDE, API and MCP requests
- Guarantees production workload isolation
- Rotates keys and maintains operational consistency across environments
This is the safety layer that provides the necessary governance to allow humans and AI agents to investigate live systems without risking performance, security, or data privacy.
Lightrun Agents
The Lightrun agents they run alongside your application
and insert Lightrun actions at runtime.
Agents capture snapshots, logs, metrics, traces, and object-level state from running code on demand. They respond only to approved instructions from the Management Server.
- Zero overhead until activated
Production safe dynamic instrumentation
Collect variables, stack frames, object graphs, and execution paths
Automatic cleanup after investigations
Broad language and framework support across microservices and monoliths
Agents deliver precise runtime evidence while the application continues to serve traffic normally, bridging the gap between static code and live behavior.
Client Interfaces
Multiple ways for humans and AI to access and use live runtime context.
Native integrations for JetBrains, VS Code, and Visual Studio, so developers can add snapshots and logs directly from the editor through a single governed connection.
Use APIs to trigger instrumentation, standardize investigation patterns, and automate verification in CI, internal tools, bots, and dashboards.
AI agents and code assistants work through the Lightrun MCP Server to query live state and validate hypotheses safely.
- Request: A developer or AI agent requests live data via IDE, API, or MCP.
- Evaluate: The Management Server authenticates the requester and evaluates safety policies.
- Instruct: The Server issues a controlled order to the relevant Agent.
- Stream: The Agent collects only the approved data and streams it back through the Server.
- Evidence: The client receives structured runtime evidence to debug, validate, or automate decisions.
No direct connections. No risk. Full governance and full visibility.
Security and Governance by Design
Lightrun is built for controlled runtime access in sensitive runtime environments.
- No direct connections: All data flows pass through the Management Server. Clients never touch the runtime directly
- Granular access policies: Fine-grained RBAC policies control exactly which users or AI agents can instrument specific services, ensuring least-privilege access.
- Temporary instrumentation: All investigation points are temporary and permission bound
- Encrypted communication: SSL-enforced paths between servers and agents.
- Minimal footprint: Instant ‘off’ capability with no persistent storage unless explicitly configured
