Genuine question.

We keep running into situations where something only breaks in production, and the first thing we realize is:
we did not log the right things.

Then the cycle goes like this:

1. Something weird happens in prod (a crash, some business logic failing, user stuck, API edge case).

2. We check logs and realize we have zero visibility.

3. We add logs locally, rebuild, release, wait for users to update.

4. And then hope the new logs will actually show what is going on.

By the time we finally understand the bug, it has already wasted time and energy.

Other things that make this annoying:

• Log levels are static. We cannot just say "turn on verbose logs for user X for the next 15 minutes".

• If we crank logs up globally, everything becomes noisy and unreadable.

• Analytics is not helpful here. This is not funnels. This is context.

• Crash reporters only help if the app actually crashes. Half the pain is silent failures, wrong states, unexpected branching.

It feels like logging requires psychic ability. Like we have to predict every failure path before shipping or we are stuck doing the "rebuild just to add a log" dance.

So I am curious:

How do your teams debug in production without shipping a new build?

Do you:

• Ship verbose logs all the time?

• Use feature flags to toggle log levels?

• Turn on logging remotely for specific users?

• Capture everything and filter later (which sounds expensive)?

• Or just suffer through this like we do?

Really interested in hearing actual workflows, not theory. Looking for how people practically deal with this.