Faultwright – Error Monitor, Cron & Email Failure Alerts

“The site was fine yesterday.” Faultwright shows you what broke, when it started, which plugin is probably responsible, and what to do about it. No external account, no developer required.

Five failure sources, one timeline

• PHP errors – fatals, uncaught exceptions and warnings, with the file, line and a trimmed stack trace. An optional one-file early loader captures fatals raised while other plugins start up. New lines in debug.log are imported too.
• JavaScript errors – a 1.4 KB collector (no cookies, no dependencies; sampling uses sessionStorage) reports browser errors, attributed to the plugin or theme that shipped the script. Browser-extension noise is filtered out.
• Cron health – detects a dead WP-Cron, overdue events, events whose plugin was removed, and scheduled jobs that crash.
• Email failures – every wp_mail failure plus SMTP-plugin errors, and a warning when orders or form entries happen but no email goes out.
• Update failures – plugin, theme and core updates that could not be installed, auto-update failures and plugins that crash on activation.
• REST / AJAX 5xx – API routes and admin-ajax actions that return server errors.

“What changed right before it started”

Faultwright keeps a change log: plugin and theme installs, updates, activations, deletions, theme switches, WordPress and PHP version changes, permalink and URL changes. Every issue shows the changes in the 48 hours before its first occurrence, ranked by likelihood.

Plain-English explanations

Over forty built-in explanations cover the errors people actually hit: memory exhausted, maximum execution time, undefined function, cannot redeclare, headers already sent, SMTP authentication, cURL timeouts, mixed content, “$ is not defined”, chunk load errors and more. Each one says what it means, the likely cause, what to try, and when to contact a developer or your host.

For anything else, an optional bring-your-own-key Explain with AI button sends the error details to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint (Ollama, Groq, OpenRouter). Nothing is ever sent automatically.

Everything else

• Issues grouped by fingerprint with count, first/last seen, affected URLs and roles, Open / Resolved / Ignored status and notes. Resolved issues reopen automatically if the error comes back.
• Timeline of errors and changes on one axis (24h / 7d / 30d).
• Cron screen with next run, overdue flags, last duration and Run now (defers to WP Crontrol when installed).
• Dashboard widget with a 7-day sparkline and an admin-bar badge with the open critical count.
• Daily or weekly digest email and an immediate email for the first occurrence of a new critical issue (throttled). Both are on by default, go to the site admin email until you enter recipients, and can be switched off under Settings → Notifications.
• Site Health tests: cron running, no fatals in 7 days, emails sending.
• WP-CLI: wp faultwright issues list, wp faultwright issues show <id>, wp faultwright cron check, wp faultwright changes list, wp faultwright prune, wp faultwright test-error, wp faultwright digest.
• Privacy by default: error records hold no user IDs, email addresses, IP addresses or request bodies, and query strings are stripped from URLs. The change log records which logged-in user made a change. Retention is 30 days for events and 90 days for changes.
• Flood protection: per-request and per-minute caps, a file fallback if the database is unavailable, and a kill-switch constant.

Developer hooks

faultwright_ignore_error, `faultwright_js_noise_patterns`, `faultwright_explanations`, `faultwright_severity`, `faultwright_event_recorded`, `faultwright_notification_channels`, `faultwright_capability`, `faultwright_ai_prompt`, `faultwright_retention_days`, `faultwright_mail_activity_count`.

External services

Faultwright runs entirely on your own server. It has no telemetry, no account, no licence check and no update server of its own. The only time anything is sent to a third party is the optional “Explain with AI” feature described below.

Explain with AI (optional, off by default)

Some errors have no built-in explanation. For those, an administrator can turn on “Explain with AI” under Faultwright → Settings → Explanations, paste their own API key, pick a provider, and then press “Explain with AI” followed by “Send” on an individual issue. Nothing is sent automatically, on a schedule, or without that second click. Before sending, the screen shows which provider and model will be used and a rough token count.

On each click, Faultwright sends one request containing:

• the error message (as produced by the failing code, so it may contain whatever that code put in it), its severity, source (PHP, JavaScript, cron, email, update or API) and the request type (front end, admin, cron, REST, AJAX, CLI);
• the file path and line number where the error occurred, and the file paths and function names from the stack trace (relative to your WordPress folder, never file contents, never function arguments);
• the plugin or theme Faultwright attributed the error to;
• your WordPress and PHP version numbers;
• your API key, in the authorisation header, so the provider can bill you.

It does not send your site URL, page URLs, visitor roles, IP addresses, user accounts, email addresses, form data or database contents. The provider’s reply is stored in your own database with the issue and is deleted with it. You can adjust or strip the prompt with the faultwright_ai_prompt filter.

The request goes only to the provider you selected:

• OpenAI (api.openai.com) – Terms: https://openai.com/policies/terms-of-use – Privacy: https://openai.com/policies/privacy-policy
• Anthropic (api.anthropic.com) – Terms: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/commercial-terms – Privacy: https://www.anthropic.com/legal/privacy
• Google Gemini (generativelanguage.googleapis.com) – Terms: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms – Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• OpenAI-compatible endpoint – any base URL you enter, for example a self-hosted Ollama, Groq or OpenRouter. Data goes to that server under that operator’s terms and privacy policy, which you are responsible for reviewing. If the base URL is left empty this option sends to OpenAI.

Your API key is stored encrypted in the WordPress options table using your site’s authentication salts, is never displayed again beyond its last four characters, and is removed when you clear it or uninstall the plugin.

Everything else stays on your site

• The browser error collector, loaded on front-end and admin pages when JavaScript capture is on, posts error messages, script URLs, line numbers, stack traces, the page URL with its query string removed and the viewport size to your own site’s REST API only. Sampling is decided per browser session with sessionStorage; no cookies are set. Your server keeps the visitor’s role and browser family, not IP addresses or full user-agent strings.
• Alert and digest emails go through your own site’s wp_mail() to the addresses you enter, or to the site admin email if none are set.
• The plugin links to WordPress.org for reviews; following that link is an ordinary browser visit.