docs(logger): document level convention re Slack/PostHog hook#3650
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Add JSDoc context next to the level guide in server/src/logger.ts explaining that logger.error / logger.fatal trigger the #aao-errors Slack alert and PostHog $exception capture via the pino hook, so they should be used only for unexpected, page-worthy failures. Expected failures with a graceful fallback (third-party 4xx, validation, etc.) should be logger.warn so the alert path is not taken. Same anti-pattern surfaced as ":rotating_light: System error: unknown" noise in PRs #3578, #3622, #3648. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Extends the convention added in #3650 with the third tier that emerged during the alert-noise cleanup: - Tier 1: logger.error — unexpected, pages on-call - Tier 2: logger.warn — expected third-party state we accept - Tier 3: logger.warn + createEscalation({ category, dedup_key }) — actionable but not page-worthy, queued for batch triage Docs-only. Future authors picking between error and warn for a third-party failure now have a single reference, and the escalation tier (introduced in #3672) is discoverable from the same JSDoc instead of being implicit in PR history. Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Summary
Document in
server/src/logger.tsJSDoc thatlogger.error/logger.fatal(level ≥ 50) trigger the#aao-errorsSlack alert and PostHog$exceptioncapture via the pino hook in this file (andnotifyErrorChannelinutils/posthog.ts).Authors writing tool handlers should use:
errorfor unexpected, page-worthy failures (network/parse failures in catch blocks that "shouldn't happen")warnfor expected failures that already return a graceful user-facing fallback (third-party 4xx, validation errors, "issue not found", etc.)This is the convention I learned the hard way fixing the
:rotating_light: System error: unknownSlack noise in PRs #3578, #3622, and #3648. Codifying it next to the existing log-level guide so future authors and reviewers have a clear reference.Audit data
178
logger.errorcall sites currently exist acrossserver/src/addie/mcp/*.ts. Top files:addie/mcp/admin-tools.tsaddie/mcp/member-tools.tsaddie/mcp/certification-tools.tsmcp/si-host-tools.ts,mcp/moltbook-tools.ts,mcp/knowledge-search.ts,mcp/billing-tools.tsMany are legitimate (catch blocks for unexpected failures), some are likely the user-driven-failure-with-graceful-fallback anti-pattern. Triage will follow as alerts surface in
#aao-errors. No automated downgrade in this PR — that's judgment-dependent and would have a high false-positive rate as a lint rule.Test plan
test:unit + test-dynamic-imports + typecheck) — passed🤖 Generated with Claude Code