🐛 Enhanced Debug and Development Experience

[jongalloway]

Description

Enhance the debugging and development experience with real-time visualization and comprehensive metrics.

New Features

• Real-time Tool Selection Visualization: Show how queries are routed to tools
• Multi-Backend Query Visualization: Display parallel backend queries and results
• Performance Metrics Dashboard: Show query performance across backends
• Request/Response Debugging: Enhanced debugging panel in demo application

Implementation Areas

• Extend existing Blazor demo with advanced debugging components
• Add SignalR for real-time updates
• Implement metrics collection and display
• Create developer-friendly debugging APIs

Priority & Effort

• Priority: Medium
• Effort: Medium
• Timeline: Phase 3 (Months 4-6)
• Business Value: Medium - Developer experience improvement

Dependencies

• Works best with 🏗️ Implement Multi-Backend Retrieval Architecture #34 (Multi-Backend Architecture) and 🔧 Implement Tool Selection Framework #35 (Tool Selection Framework)
• Builds on existing Blazor demo application

References

• NLWeb June 2025 Analysis - Section: "Enhanced Debug and Development Experience"
• GitHub Issues Plan - Issue 5

[jongalloway]

Dev experience proposal:

• Blazor-based debug panel backed by SignalR for live updates of tool selection steps, backend queries, and result fusion.
• Integrate OpenTelemetry (already present) to surface timings and error spans in the panel for quick diagnosis.
• Add a simple developer toggle to enable verbose instrumentation without impacting production defaults.

If that aligns, I can break this into small PRs (SignalR events, UI components, OTel surfacing) and wire them into the existing Demo.