CodeTracer Trace Format Specification
May 14, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
This repository is the source-of-truth specification for the CodeTracer trace format. It documents the binary layouts, encoding schemes, and file conventions used by CodeTracer to record and replay program execution traces.
Documents
| Document | Contents |
|---|---|
| ctfs-container.md | CTFS binary container format: magic, headers, file entries, block mapping, Base40 encoding |
| trace-events.md | TraceLowLevelEvent enum, split-binary encoding, CBOR legacy encoding |
| seekable-zstd.md | Zstd seekable compression format as used by CodeTracer |
| internal-files.md | Conventions for files stored inside a CTFS container |
| Trace-Filters.md | Cross-language trace filter contract: schema, hot-path requirement, provenance |
Implementations
- Rust (primary):
codetracer-trace-format--codetracer_ctfs,codetracer_trace_types,codetracer_trace_writer,codetracer_trace_reader - Nim (secondary):
codetracer-trace-format-nim--codetracer_ctfsNim package