Accidental debug statements

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Signals

• Placeholder messages such as got here, hello world, testing, or asdf.
• Explicit cleanup notes such as TODO remove.
• Bare variable dumps such as x = 42.
• Profanity or informal phrases used as temporary debugging markers.
• Messages with no stable operational meaning.

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Example

{
  "@timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z",
  "service.name": "checkout-api",
  "severity_text": "DEBUG",
  "body": "got here"
}

id: drop-debug-got-here-checkout-api
name: Drop got-here debug log from checkout-api
description: Accidental debug statement that shipped to production.
log:
  match:
    - resource_attribute: service.name
      exact: checkout-api
    - log_field: body
      exact: "got here"
  keep: none

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Recommended enforcement

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Detection notes

• Tero evaluates message content rather than severity.
• Tero flags common debug phrases, random character strings, cleanup notes, and bare variable dumps.
• Detection is conservative for this category: Tero flags only logs that are clear accidents.
• Tero excludes legitimate verbose logging when the message has operational meaning.