How to Confirm My Deployed Golang App Binary Is Instrumented

When deploying a Go application instrumented with Sealights, you may want to verify whether the final binary actually contains the Sealights instrumentation code.

Problem

You do not see any Sealights‑related instrumentation output in your application logs, and your service does not appear listed in the Live Agents page in the Sealights Cockpit.

You’re unsure whether:

• the binary was properly instrumented, or
• the environment prevents the agent from activating

Solution

Quick Environment Checks

Enable verbose Sealights logs

Make the agent print startup information:

export SEALIGHTS_LOG_LEVEL=debug
export SEALIGHTS_DISABLE_ON_INIT=false

Restart the app (or container) and check logs.

Check the token and connectivity

• Ensure a valid Sealights token is provided (env var, config, secret).
• Confirm the app can reach the Sealights endpoint (network, proxy, DNS).

A missing token or blocked network path prevents the agent from initializing.

Binary Level Verification

To confirm whether the binary was correctly instrumented, inspect it for the internal Sealights probe symbols. Run

Bash

go tool nm <your-executable> | grep "__sealights__"

Powershell

go tool nm <your-executable> | Select-String "__sealights__"

If no output appears, the binary is not instrumented. Otherwise, you'll see lines such as:

If the Binary Is Not Instrumented

Check the following in your build pipeline:

• Sealights instrumentation step actually ran
• Instrumentation was executed on the final compiled binary, not an intermediate artifact
• The correct artifact was deployed
• No stripping/minification removed symbols