operator-questions.md

Operator Questions

Cachelet is designed to answer practical cache questions from the CLI and from telemetry.

What Is Cached Right Now?

List the keys for a family prefix:

php artisan cachelet:list users.index

That tells you which concrete keys Cachelet has recorded for the family.

What Does This Family Represent?

Inspect one family:

php artisan cachelet:inspect users.index

The coordinate projection answers:

• module
• prefix
• key
• store
• tags
• version
• SWR policy
• scope
• module metadata

What Is The Smallest Safe Invalidation Boundary?

Prefer the narrowest boundary that matches the problem:

• exact key when one entry is stale
• prefix when one cache family is stale
• tags when the store supports tags and the tag maps cleanly to the domain
• explicit scope when multiple modules share an operational boundary

Avoid whole-store flushes unless the whole store is truly invalid.

Did Freshness Recover?

Scoped interventions distinguish:

• preview: what would be affected
• receipt: what was executed
• verification: whether fresh evidence returned after execution

That is the difference between "keys were deleted" and "the application recovered useful fresh data."

How Do I Keep Sidecars Clean?

Run:

php artisan cachelet:prune

This removes orphaned registry entries and expired telemetry sidecars.

When Should I Export Telemetry?

Export telemetry when these answers need to be shared outside the Laravel process.

The exporter can feed:

• structured logs
• internal dashboards
• audit trails
• operational notebooks
• custom developer tools