Shared tools across languages.

Each instrument and its job

Choose a tool for its diagnostic scope. CPU sampling estimates where time goes; tracing counts executions19. Elide's bare --profiler selects tracing; --profiler=cpusampling selects sampling1 2.

Managed-runtime inspection in VisualVM

VisualVM opens recordings and managed-heap dumps to reveal runtime activity and objects retaining memory. Live inspection requires the corresponding monitoring support. These screenshots show upstream examples13.

Compiler graphs in IGV

IGV exposes Truffle trees, guest call graphs and compiler phases, connecting source structure to optimization decisions26 27. Elide exposes compilation tracing through -X; compiler graph dumps are configured separately28 29. These screenshots show upstream examples26.

One Insight agent, two languages

Save these three files together. The agent observes source loading; the two targets each print a result31.

observe.js

insight.on("source", (source) => {
  if (source.name === "target.js" || source.name === "target.py") {
    console.log(`Observed source: ${source.name}`);
  }
});

target.js

function twice(value) {
  return value * 2;
}
console.log(`Result: ${twice(21)}`);

target.py

def twice(value):
    return value * 2

print("Result: " + str(twice(21)))

Run each target with the same agent. Captured on macOS ARM64, 2026-09-05, with Elide 1.5.0+20260902.bac3ab38; both commands exited successfully with empty stderr31.

$ elide run --insights=observe.js target.js
Observed source: target.js
Result: 42

$ elide run --insights=observe.js target.py
Observed source: target.py
Result: 42