--- title: "Getting Started With Sentry" description: "Set up Sentry and configure the key features that help you find and fix problems faster." url: https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/ --- # Getting Started With Sentry Sentry captures errors, logs, traces, replays, profiles, and metrics from your application — and connects them all through distributed tracing. This page walks you through the steps to get the most out of Sentry **after you've [installed the SDK](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms.md)**. **New to Sentry? → [Sign up here](https://sentry.io/signup/)** or [try the sandbox](https://sandbox.sentry.io/) to explore the product without installing anything. ## [Step 1: Connect Your Source Code](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#step-1-connect-your-source-code) Connecting your source code repository is the single most impactful setup step. It unlocks: * **[Suspect commits](https://docs.sentry.io/product/issues/suspect-commits.md)** — Sentry identifies the most likely commit that introduced an error * **[Seer AI debugging](https://docs.sentry.io/product/ai-in-sentry/seer.md)** — root cause analysis, [Autofix](https://docs.sentry.io/product/ai-in-sentry/seer/autofix.md) (automatic PR generation), and [AI Code Review](https://docs.sentry.io/product/ai-in-sentry/seer/code-review.md) * **Stack trace links** — click from a stack trace directly to the line in your repo * **Readable stack traces** — upload [source maps](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/javascript/sourcemaps.md) (JavaScript) or [debug symbols](https://docs.sentry.io/platforms/native/data-management/debug-files.md) (native) for de-minified/de-obfuscated stack traces Set up your [GitHub](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/source-code-mgmt/github.md), [GitLab](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/source-code-mgmt/gitlab.md), or [Bitbucket](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/source-code-mgmt/bitbucket.md) integration in **[Settings > Integrations](https://sentry.io/orgredirect/organizations/:orgslug/settings/integrations/)**. ## [Step 2: Set Up Alerts and Notifications](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#step-2-set-up-alerts-and-notifications) Alerts make sure the right people know when things go wrong. Sentry supports: * **[Issue alerts](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/alerts.md)** — notify on new errors, regressions, or error spikes * **[Metric alerts](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/alerts.md)** — trigger on thresholds like error rate, latency, or crash-free session rate * **[Uptime monitors](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/monitors/uptime-monitoring.md)** — watch your endpoints for downtime * **[Cron monitors](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/monitors/crons.md)** — track scheduled jobs for failures or missed runs Route alerts to [Slack](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/notification-incidents/slack.md), [Discord](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/notification-incidents/discord.md), [PagerDuty](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/notification-incidents/pagerduty.md), or your [issue tracker](https://docs.sentry.io/integrations/issue-tracking.md) (Jira, Linear, GitHub Issues). See [alert best practices](https://docs.sentry.io/product/monitors-and-alerts/alerts.md#alerts-best-practices) for tips on avoiding noise. ## [Step 3: Turn On More Features](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#step-3-turn-on-more-features) After basic error monitoring, these features add the debugging context that will help you find and fix problems faster: | Feature | What it adds | Set up | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | **[Tracing](https://docs.sentry.io/product/trace-explorer.md)** | Follow requests across services, find slow queries and N+1s | Enable `tracesSampleRate` in SDK config | | **[Logs](https://docs.sentry.io/product/logs.md)** | Structured logs alongside errors and traces | Enable `enableLogs: true` in SDK config — [set up guide](https://docs.sentry.io/product/logs/getting-started.md) | | **[Session Replay](https://docs.sentry.io/product/session-replay.md)** | Video-like recordings of user sessions (web and mobile) | Enable replay in SDK config | | **[Profiling](https://docs.sentry.io/product/profiling.md)** | CPU profiles showing which functions are slow | Enable profiling in SDK config | | **[Application Metrics](https://docs.sentry.io/product/metrics.md)** | Custom counters, gauges, distributions | Add metric calls to your code | | **[User Feedback](https://docs.sentry.io/product/user-feedback.md)** | Collect bug reports from users, linked to errors | Add the feedback widget | Check out Sentry's [cookbooks](https://sentry.io/cookbook/) to learn more about how others use Sentry, and how to go deeper with each of Sentry's tools. ## [Step 4: Explore Your Data](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#step-4-explore-your-data) Once data is flowing, use these tools to understand your application's health: * **[Dashboards](https://docs.sentry.io/product/dashboards.md)** — pre-built views for frontend, backend, mobile, and AI performance, plus custom dashboards * **[Trace Explorer](https://docs.sentry.io/product/trace-explorer.md)** — search, filter, and aggregate span data to find performance bottlenecks * **[Releases](https://docs.sentry.io/product/releases.md)** — track crash-free sessions, version adoption, and regressions by deploy ## [Learn More](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#learn-more) ### [Practical Guides](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#practical-guides) Our **[Guides](https://docs.sentry.io/guides.md)** cover real-world patterns for each feature: * [What to Prioritize](https://docs.sentry.io/guides/issues-errors.md) — error handling and triage strategies * [What to Log](https://docs.sentry.io/guides/logs.md) — structured logging patterns * [What to Track](https://docs.sentry.io/guides/metrics.md) — choosing the right metrics * [Querying Traces](https://docs.sentry.io/guides/querying-traces.md) — finding slow pages and bottlenecks * [Adding Custom Spans](https://docs.sentry.io/guides/custom-spans.md) — instrumenting your own code * [Using Session Replay](https://docs.sentry.io/guides/session-replay.md) — debugging workflows with replays ### [Cookbook](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#cookbook) The **[Sentry Cookbook](https://sentry.io/cookbook/)** has step-by-step recipes for common workflows, including debugging with MCP + Cursor, setting up AI observability, creating dashboards with AI agents, and more. ### [Interactive Resources](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#interactive-resources) * **[Sandbox](https://sandbox.sentry.io/)** — explore Sentry with pre-populated sample data ### [Tutorials](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics.md#tutorials) Follow along with a sample app to set up error monitoring or distributed tracing end-to-end: * #### [Performance Monitoring](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/performance-monitoring.md) Track application performance across your full stack with distributed tracing, automated issue detection, and pre-built dashboards. * #### [User Feedback Basics](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/user-feedback-basics.md) Learn how to configure and deploy Sentry's User Feedback widget to capture qualitative insights from your users. ## Pages in this section - [Distributed Tracing Tutorial](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/distributed-tracing.md) - [Performance Monitoring](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/performance-monitoring.md) - [User Feedback Basics](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/user-feedback-basics.md) - [Frontend Error Monitoring Tutorial](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/integrate-frontend.md) - [Backend Error Monitoring Tutorial](https://docs.sentry.io/product/sentry-basics/integrate-backend.md)