winston-transport-debug-console

A Winston transport that makes logs visible in inspector clients (like VS Code’s Debug Console) with support for fully inspectable objects.

---

Why?

By default, Winston writes to stdout/stderr. When debugging in a Node inspector client (like VS Code's Debug Console) those logs either won't make it to the debug console, or you must use some other method to capture them (like "outputCapture": "std" in VS Code), even then, they'll appear as plain strings in the Debug Console — You will not get object inspection.

This transport uses Node’s inspector.console API (based on the Chrome DevTools Protocol) to send logs directly to the inspector. The result:

- Logs show up in VS Code’s Debug Console (and Chrome DevTools, WebStorm, etc.)
- Objects remain inspectable, not stringified
- No duplication in the terminal — inspector.console does not touch stdout/stderr

---

Install

``bash
npm install winston-transport-debug-console
`

---

Usage

`ts
import { createLogger, format, transports } from "winston"
import { DebugConsole } from "winston-transport-debug-console"

const logger = createLogger({
level: "debug",
format: format.combine(format.timestamp(), format.errors({ stack: true }), format.splat()),
transports: [
// Show inspectable objects in VS Code Debug Console
new DebugConsole(),

// Keep pretty logs in the terminal too
new transports.Console({
format: format.combine(
format.colorize(),
format.timestamp(),
format.printf(({ level, message, timestamp, ...meta }) => {
const extra = Object.keys(meta).length ? ${JSON.stringify(meta, null, 2)} : ""
return ${timestamp} ${level}: ${message}${extra}
})
),
}),
],
})

logger.info("User loaded", { id: 42, name: "Alice" })
`

In VS Code Debug Console, the id and name object are fully expandable.
In your terminal, you still see pretty, colored log lines.

$3

If you see logs originating from debug-console-transport.js:35 and you're using VS Code, you may need to set the following in your launch.json:

`json
"skipFiles": ["/", "${workspaceFolder}/node_modules/"]
`

---

Options

`ts
new DebugConsole({
level: "debug", // Winston's level filter (default: "info")
levelMap: {
// Optional map for custom levels
crit: "error", // Map your "crit" level to inspector.console.error
silly: "debug",
},
})
`

- levelMap: Map unsupported Winston levels to existing inspector console methods.
Throws if you try to use a level that isn’t supported and isn’t mapped.

---

Node.js Compatibility

Requires Node.js ≥ 11.0.0 (when inspector.console` was introduced).
Tested on Node 18 and 20.

---

License?

MIT