Console Channel

ConsoleLog writes colorized, icon-prefixed lines to the terminal. No external dependencies, no configuration required to start.

import { ConsoleLog } from "@warlock.js/logger";

const channel = new ConsoleLog();

It sets terminal: true, so ANSI color codes in your messages are preserved (unlike the file channels, which strip them).

Terminal output

Each line follows this format:

{icon} {level} ({time}) [{module}] [{action}] {message}

The console shows a time-only timestamp (HH:mm:ss.SSS) — within a dev session the date rarely changes, so the full ISO date is dropped here. The persistent channels (FileLog / JSONFileLog) keep the full ISO timestamp.

Real output:

⚙ debug (10:22:00.000) [auth] [hashPassword] Hashing started
ℹ info (10:22:01.482) [users] [register] New user created
⚠ warn (10:22:02.300) [queue] [process] Retry limit approaching
✗ error (10:22:03.111) [payments] [charge] Card declined
✓ success (10:22:03.890) [email] [send] Welcome email delivered

Prefix by level — each line is prefixed with the level’s icon and name. The name is padded to a fixed width so the timestamp, module, and action columns line up vertically across a stream of logs:

Level	Prefix
debug	⚙ debug
info	ℹ info
warn	⚠ warn
error	✗ error
success	✓ success
fatal	☠ fatal — white on a bright-red background badge (deliberately louder than error so a fatal entry can’t be missed)

Colors by part

Part	Color
Timestamp (…)	Gray (dimmed, so the message stands out)
Module […]	Cyan
Action […]	Magenta
Message — debug	Magenta bright
Message — info	Blue bright
Message — warn	Yellow bright
Message — error	Red bright
Message — success	Green bright
Message — fatal	Red bright + bold

Object messages

If message is an object, ConsoleLog issues a second console.log call with the raw object on its own line, so the Node.js inspector (or browser DevTools) can expand it interactively.

Showing context

By default ConsoleLog discards the context payload — the file/JSON channels still record it, but the terminal stays uncluttered. Set showContext: true to render the context object on a second line, pretty-printed with util.inspect:

import { ConsoleLog, log } from "@warlock.js/logger";

log.addChannel(new ConsoleLog({ showContext: true }));

log.info("payments", "charge", "card declined", {
  userId: 42,
  amount: 1999,
});
// ℹ info (…) [payments] [charge] card declined
//   ↳ { userId: 42, amount: 1999 }

contextDepth (default 4) clamps how deep util.inspect recurses into nested objects — useful when one context field is a giant payload you don’t want sprawling across the terminal:

new ConsoleLog({
  showContext: true,
  contextDepth: 1, // collapses nested objects to [Object]
});

Dev vs production

showContext is off by default. Persistent channels (FileLog, JSONFileLog) always retain context regardless of this flag — they just don’t surface it in the terminal. A typical setup keeps showContext: true in development and the default in production.

Filtering

ConsoleLog accepts the shared levels array and filter predicate (see Channels Overview). A common pattern is keeping the terminal focused on the subsystem you’re working on:

import { ConsoleLog } from "@warlock.js/logger";

// Only show auth-related messages during local development
new ConsoleLog({
  filter: (data) => data.module === "auth",
});

// Show everything except background workers
new ConsoleLog({
  filter: (data) => !["queue", "scheduler"].includes(data.module),
});

// Errors always pass through, info only for payments
new ConsoleLog({
  filter: (data) => data.type === "error" || data.module === "payments",
});

The full option shape is ConsoleLogConfig — the shared options plus showContext / contextDepth.