01 — OverviewWhat Beacon does
Beacon adds a dedicated panel to your browser's Developer Tools. As you browse, it captures every analytics and tag-management request ("beacon") the page sends, identifies the vendor, and decodes the opaque payload into a clean, readable view. Where a request carries a response — an Adobe Edge response, a Target delivery, an AJO decision — Beacon decodes that too.
It is designed to answer the questions that come up during implementation and QA: Did the beacon fire? To the right destination? With the right values? Does it match my schema? What changed between these two hits? Everything runs locally in your browser; nothing is sent anywhere.
No proxy, no setup
Works entirely inside DevTools. No Charles, no Fiddler, no local certificate.
Decoded, not raw
Parameters and payloads are named and organized, not shown as a URL soup.
Adobe-first, vendor-wide
Deep decoding for the Adobe stack, plus 30+ other analytics and marketing tools.
Local & private
No telemetry, no accounts, no data collection. See the privacy section.
02 — Getting startedInstall & first run
Beacon is available for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge, and works in other Chromium-based browsers. After installing:
- Open Developer Tools — F12, or Cmd + Option + I on macOS / Ctrl + Shift + I on Windows.
- Select the Beacon tab in the DevTools toolbar.
- Browse the site you are debugging. Beacons appear in the list in real time as they fire.
03 — The interfaceThe Beacon panel
The panel is split into a live beacon list and a detail view. Each captured beacon shows its vendor, request method, decoded type, timestamp, and a primary value (for example, the event type or report suite). Selecting a beacon opens its full decoded detail.
- Recording — toggle capture on and off; Clear empties the current list.
- Search & filter — narrow the list by vendor, platform, or text.
- Select & compare — select beacons for diffing or export (see Workflow).
- Footer controls — light/dark theme, UI size scaling, and accent color (see Interface controls).
04 — CoreCapturing & decoding beacons
For every request that matches a known vendor, Beacon captures the request (and its response, where available) and presents the decoded data as a key-value view — flat or nested — that you can read at a glance. Long values, IDs, and payloads have one-click copy buttons.
Decoding is vendor-aware: a Google Analytics event is grouped into standard, event, and user-property parameters; an Adobe Analytics hit is broken into eVars, props, and events; a Web SDK call is expanded from its XDM structure. The result is that you read meaning, not query strings.
05 — FlagshipAdobe Experience Platform (Web SDK)Adobe
Beacon has first-class support for the AEP Web SDK (Alloy). It captures the /ee/v2/interact and /ee/v1/collect calls and decodes both the outgoing payload and the Edge Network response.
XDM payload
The full XDM object, flattened into readable paths with tree and flat views.
Identity & ECID
The identityMap and ECID surfaced and copyable, with identity-graph context.
Datastream
The datastream ID, resolved to a friendly name when connected to Adobe.
Edge response
Response handles, personalization propositions, consent, and state:store.
Schema validation
When connected to your Adobe sandbox, Beacon compares the outgoing XDM payload against your XDM schema and flags mismatches — missing required fields, unexpected fields, and type drift — so you catch data-quality problems before they reach reporting.
06 — PersonalizationAdobe TargetAdobe
Beacon decodes Adobe Target in both delivery paths: standalone at.js Delivery API calls (*.tt.omtrdc.net/rest/v1/delivery) and Target arriving through the AEP Web SDK as propositions.
The request
For each delivery call, Beacon shows the call type (execute, prefetch, both, or notification), the at_property token, and whether A4T (Analytics for Target) is linked via the supplemental data ID.
What was served
The response is decoded into every location that was evaluated. For each one you see the activity, experience, and offer — resolved to their names when response tokens are enabled, or their IDs otherwise — plus the audience and an A4T indicator. Locations that returned default content are flagged, so you can tell "didn't qualify" from "no offer."
Expandable per-decision detail
Every served decision expands to reveal the full picture:
- IDs — activity, experience, and offer/option IDs, each copyable for cross-referencing in the Target UI.
- Actions — the actual DOM actions the offer ran: the action type (
setHtml,setStyle,setAttribute…), the CSS selector it targeted, and the content, with copy. - Response tokens — the complete token set, including audience, decisioning method, geo, and profile attributes.
- A4T payload — the
peandtntaanalytics-stitching values. - Click metrics — click-track tokens and selectors attached to the mbox or view.
Target via Web SDK
When Target is delivered through Alloy, Beacon extracts the Target propositions (decision provider TGT) from the Edge response and shows the activity and experience per scope, separate from the generic proposition list.
07 — MessagingAdobe Journey OptimizerAdobe
AJO reaches the web through the AEP Web SDK. Beacon decodes AJO in both directions — the propositions the Edge returns, and the tracking beacons the page sends back.
Propositions, decoded by schema
AJO decisions (decision provider AJO) are decoded by their content-item schema, so the opaque JSON becomes readable:
- DOM actions — the action type and the selector it targets.
- HTML & JSON content items — a content preview.
- Content cards — the title and body, unwrapped from their ruleset-item.
- Default content items — flagged as "no offer served."
Each proposition also shows its activity ID and event token.
Per-proposition lifecycle
This is the part standalone decoders don't offer. For every returned proposition, Beacon correlates across every beacon in the session to build a lifecycle: Returned → Displayed → Interacted → Dismissed. Each marker is filled only if a matching decisioning event carrying that proposition's ID was actually captured. A hollow Displayed is the instant tell that a proposition came back but never rendered or never tracked — the classic reason a campaign shows zero impressions.
Tracking beacons
Outgoing decisioning beacons (display, interact, dismiss) are decoded on their own, showing the event type, any action label, and the proposition IDs they report on.
08 — AnalyticsAdobe AnalyticsAdobe
Beacon decodes AppMeasurement / Adobe Analytics hits (/b/ss/) into organized groups: the report suite, standard variables, eVars, props, hierarchy variables, events, and context data — including correctly reconstructing nested context-data subgroups from the serialized request.
09 — Tag managementAdobe LaunchAdobe
Beacon reads Adobe Launch (Data Collection Tags) page state directly and presents it across dedicated tabs:
Rules
Every Launch rule with its fired status, in a timestamped QA log.
Conditions
Per-rule condition evaluation and status, so you can see why a rule did or didn't fire.
Data Elements
Resolve any data element's current value live via _satellite.getVar(), timestamped; a new instance is kept each time a value changes.
adobeDataLayer
The data layer's contents and activity.
10 — Tag managementOther tag managers
Beyond Adobe Launch, Beacon includes dedicated support for the major tag managers and the consent layer:
11 — Marketing automationMarketo & Adobe CampaignNew
Beacon decodes marketing-automation beacons, and flags when a tracking call carries an email or other PII.
Marketo Munchkin
Captures Munchkin tracking (*.mktoresp.com/webevents/*) and the Munchkin library. It pulls the Munchkin account ID from the host, names the event — page visit, link click, or associate lead — and surfaces the tracking token and page. A PII flag fires when a lead email is present.
Marketo Forms 2.0
Decodes form submissions (/leadCapture/save), breaking out the form ID and Munchkin ID along with every submitted field — the answer to "did the form fire, to the right instance, with the right fields?" — again with the PII flag.
Adobe Campaign
Detects Campaign email open and click tracking, distinguishes the two, and shows the tracking host and the encoded reference segments. Beacon is explicit that these IDs are server-encoded by Adobe Campaign and are not resolvable in the browser.
12 — CoverageSupported vendors
Beacon recognizes and decodes 30+ analytics, personalization, and marketing vendors, grouped by category:
| Category | Vendors |
|---|---|
| Adobe | Experience Platform Web SDK, Analytics (AppMeasurement), Target, Journey Optimizer, Audience Manager, Launch / Data Collection Tags, Media / Heartbeat, Campaign |
| Analytics | Google Analytics 4, Universal Analytics, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Segment, mParticle, Matomo, Webtrends, Piwik PRO |
| Advertising | Google Ads, Meta / Facebook Pixel, Microsoft / Bing UET |
| Marketing & engagement | Marketo Munchkin, Marketo Forms, Braze, Brevo, Optimizely, Invoca |
| Tag management | Adobe Launch, Google Tag Manager, Tealium iQ, Ensighten, Piwik PRO Tag Manager |
| Consent | OneTrust |
13 — QAWorkflow & QA tools
Attribute-level diffing
Select two beacons and compare them side by side to see exactly which attributes changed across a state transition or SPA navigation.
Timeline & digest
See beacons in chronological order, and get a rolled-up digest view of a session.
Select-all & export
Select beacons (respecting the active filter) and export the session to JSON for documentation or cross-team debugging.
One-click copy
Copy any decoded value, ID, or payload directly from the detail view.
14 — OptionalAEP authentication & APIAdobe
Beacon includes an optional, off-by-default integration with Adobe Experience Platform. When you choose to connect, it authenticates through Adobe's own sign-in (IMS), lets you pick a sandbox, and calls Adobe's APIs directly from your browser to resolve schema, field, datastream, and activity identifiers into human-readable names, and to power schema validation.
15 — InterfaceDisplay controls
- Theme — light and dark, tuned for DevTools' own appearance.
- Size scaling — from Small to XX-Large for high-resolution and high-density monitors.
- Accent color — choose the panel's accent (teal, blue, violet, amber, or rose).
These preferences are saved locally and persist across sessions.
16 — TrustPrivacy & data handling
Beacon collects nothing. It has no servers of its own, no analytics SDK, no advertising, and no telemetry. Everything it decodes — including beacons that may contain personal data such as emails or identifiers — is processed locally, within your Developer Tools session, and is never transmitted to the author or any third party. The only outbound requests Beacon can make are to Adobe, and only if you explicitly enable the optional AEP integration described above.
Full details are in the Privacy Policy.
17 — HelpSupport & feedback
Feedback and feature requests are welcome and shape what gets built next. You can reach the project at support@beacondebugger.com, or leave a rating and review on the Chrome Web Store. Bug reports are especially valued — decoders for newer surfaces like Target and AJO are validated against real traffic, and a quick note about anything that decodes incorrectly helps enormously.