Inspector Operations
The Inspector is the spine of 3Lens. All tools route through selection and entity inspection. Use these commands to examine entities in detail.
When to Use
- •Examining a specific entity (mesh, material, texture, shader)
- •Understanding entity dependencies and relationships
- •Tracing cost attribution paths
- •Selecting entities programmatically via query
Commands
Inspect an Entity
bash
# Basic entity inspection 3lens inspect <entityId> # Include additional data 3lens inspect <entityId> --include edges,cost,diffs # Output as JSON 3lens inspect <entityId> --format json
Output includes:
- •Identity: type, id, origin
- •Dependencies: incoming/outgoing edges
- •Cost attribution: weighted blame chains
- •Lifecycle + diffs: creation, updates, disposal
Select by Query
bash
# Select top GPU cost entities 3lens inspect --query "top_gpu_cost" --limit 5 # Select materials using a specific texture 3lens inspect --query "materials_using_texture:tex123"
The 5 Inspector Questions
Every entity inspection should answer:
- •What is this? (type, properties, origin)
- •What does it depend on? (incoming edges)
- •What depends on it? (outgoing edges)
- •How much does it cost? (attributed metrics with blame chain)
- •How has it changed? (diffs over time/traces)
Entity ID Format
Entity IDs follow a stable, namespaced format:
code
<type>:<namespace>:<identifier> Examples: mesh:scene:Player_Avatar material:default:PBR_Metal_01 texture:loaded:albedo_diffuse.png shader:compiled:StandardPBR_v123
Agent Use Cases
- •Root cause analysis: "Inspect entity mesh:scene:Player to find why it's expensive"
- •Dependency tracking: "Show all materials that depend on this texture"
- •Cost attribution: "Trace the blame chain for this GPU hotspot"
- •Bulk selection: "Select all entities matching this query"
Additional Resources
- •For detailed command syntax, see skills.md
- •For Inspector contract, see agents/contracts/inspector.md
- •For entity graph rules, see agents/contracts/entity-graph.md
- •Command: inspect
- •Contract: attribution.md
- •Contract: fidelity.md