planinstrumenter

Planinstrumenter is a software component or framework that attaches to planning systems to observe, record, and analyze the process of plan construction and plan execution. It is designed to gather data about decisions, timing, resources, and outcomes without altering the core logic of the planner. The concept can refer to a standalone tool or to a set of libraries integrated into a planner, workflow engine, or robotics scheduler.

Key functions include event capture, state and decision logging, resource accounting, and timing measurement. A planinstrumenter typically supports causality tracing, metric computation (such as plan length, branching factor, and deviations from the intended plan), and the generation of execution traces or reports. It often provides configurable instrumentation points, lightweight hooks, and data export formats to facilitate analysis, debugging, and reproducibility.

Architecturally, planinstrumenters are designed to be modular and pluggable. They may operate as middleware between the planner and its execution environment or as an internal subsystem that records data at predefined granularity levels. They strive to minimize overhead and avoid perturbing planner performance, while offering controls to enable or disable data collection as needed.

Common applications include research in artificial intelligence planning to compare planners and analyze strategies, enterprise workflow and manufacturing scheduling to monitor conformance and identify bottlenecks, and auditing or compliance contexts where traceability of decisions is required. The terminology is not universally standardized, but the core idea centers on instrumenting planning activities to improve understanding and accountability.

Related concepts include execution tracing, event logging, instrumentation, and workflow management.