Hi HN, I’m Tom, the CTO and cofounder of Multiplayer.
We built this because we were tired of incomplete bug reports, hard-to-reproduce failures, and stale docs.
Where traditional recordings stop at the UI, we go deeper. This is all the data you wish was easy to get from your APM tool and screen recorder, all in one place.
Multiplayer records full-stack sessions (frontend + backend + request/response content and header + user steps) in three ways:
- On-demand
- Continuous (so no repro steps are needed)
- Remote (when users don’t notice or don’t report an issue)
You can install it via browser extension, widget, or SDK, and send backend data however you like (we’re backend-agnostic and OpenTelemetry-compatible).
Once a session recording is captured, you can:
- Annotate screenshots, API calls, and traces
- Share complete bug reports across dev, QA, and product
- Feed complete context into AI tools so they generate accurate fixes, tests, and features
Along the way we learned how tricky it is to capture context without slowing down apps, and how to make recordings useful instead of overwhelming.
We’d love feedback from the HN community:
- Would you use this more for debugging, testing, or feature work?
- Do session replays add clarity in your workflow?
Happy to answer questions and share what worked (and what didn’t) while building this.
Thank you everyone for reading my article! I’m the author, Thomas Johnson.
This article stems from my frustration with the typical approach of asking, “What diagramming tool should we use?” instead of addressing the root problem: the need for up-to-date, easily accessible system architecture information.
That’s why I co-founded Multiplayer. We focus on automating the creation and maintenance of system architecture diagrams and creating a single source of truth for system information. This includes your individual components, APIs, dependencies, and repositories.
We’re language and environment agnostic and you can start with a napkin sketch or a photo of your whiteboard. And this is just the start, we have many plans for how to evolve system design tooling including supporting popular integrations and models like C4.
We built this because we were tired of incomplete bug reports, hard-to-reproduce failures, and stale docs.
Where traditional recordings stop at the UI, we go deeper. This is all the data you wish was easy to get from your APM tool and screen recorder, all in one place.
Multiplayer records full-stack sessions (frontend + backend + request/response content and header + user steps) in three ways:
- On-demand - Continuous (so no repro steps are needed) - Remote (when users don’t notice or don’t report an issue)
You can install it via browser extension, widget, or SDK, and send backend data however you like (we’re backend-agnostic and OpenTelemetry-compatible).
Once a session recording is captured, you can:
- Annotate screenshots, API calls, and traces - Share complete bug reports across dev, QA, and product - Feed complete context into AI tools so they generate accurate fixes, tests, and features
Along the way we learned how tricky it is to capture context without slowing down apps, and how to make recordings useful instead of overwhelming.
We’d love feedback from the HN community:
- Would you use this more for debugging, testing, or feature work? - Do session replays add clarity in your workflow?
Happy to answer questions and share what worked (and what didn’t) while building this.