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# Use Logs in PostHog Desktop

**Open beta**

PostHog Desktop is in beta, so some behaviors may still change.

[PostHog Desktop](/docs/posthog-desktop.md) is the surface for driving parallel agents that improve your product. For Logs, it's where you review the [Self-driving](/docs/self-driving.md) work that your firing alerts generate, plus the shifts PostHog spots in your logs on its own. You don't browse raw log lines here – that's the [web app](/docs/logs/surfaces/web-app.md).

## Before you start

1.  **Set up Logs** – [send them to PostHog with an OpenTelemetry client](/docs/logs/installation.md) so there's something to read.
2.  **Install PostHog Desktop** – [download the app](/docs/posthog-desktop/download-posthog-desktop.md) and connect it to your project.

## What you can do here

When a [log alert](/docs/logs/alerts.md) starts firing, or breaks and auto-disables, it emits a signal into Self-driving. Related signals get grouped into a [report](/docs/self-driving/reports.md) with the logs behind them, and when there's a code fix, a drafted pull request.

In PostHog Desktop you can:

-   Open a report to see the alert that triggered it, the matching logs, and any related errors and replays
-   Merge the pull request when the fix holds up, or steer the agent when it needs more context
-   Take a multi-repo fix over locally and keep going with a full agent

Agents working in PostHog Desktop can also query your logs directly through the [MCP server](/docs/logs/surfaces/mcp.md), so a report can be investigated further without you switching tools.

## What gets signalled

Alerts only signal on two transitions. Not every state change is worth waking an agent for:

| Transition | Why it's signalled |
| --- | --- |
| **Firing** | The threshold was crossed – something is worth investigating now |
| **Broken** | The alert failed repeatedly and auto-disabled – your monitoring has a hole in it |

Resolving alerts and transient errors are deliberately not signalled, so your Self-driving inbox stays about real problems.

## What PostHog finds on its own

Alerts only catch what you thought to alert on. Alongside them, PostHog sweeps your logs for shifts nobody wrote a threshold for:

-   **New and rate-shifted patterns** – a message template that's brand new, or whose rate has moved sharply against the same window last week
-   **Volume bursts** – a service logging far more than it usually does
-   **Severity shifts** – the mix tilting toward error or fatal
-   **Silent services** – a service that was logging and has stopped

These arrive as [reports](/docs/self-driving/reports.md) with the services, messages, and time ranges behind them. A log shift is usually an investigation rather than a one-line code change, so these are written up for you to confirm – they don't open a pull request on their own.

## Related

-   Create the alerts that feed this loop in [Set up log alerts](/docs/logs/alerts.md).
-   Learn how the loop works in the [Self-driving docs](/docs/self-driving.md).
-   See what else feeds it in [signal sources](/docs/self-driving/inbox/sources.md).
-   Investigate the underlying logs in the [web app](/docs/logs/surfaces/web-app.md).

### Still have questions?

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