Beacon

About

Beacon is a focused DevTools debugger for Adobe Experience Platform (AEP) Web SDK  also known as Alloy  beacons. It cuts the noise from your Edge Network calls so you can see exactly what your site is sending, and it validates that data against your XDM schema.

Built for analytics engineers, martech implementation specialists, and Adobe consultants who spend their day reading beacon payloads.

WHY BEACON
Most beacon debuggers dump every attribute into one long list, half of them empty. Beacon pins what matters, hides what doesn't, and adds the checks you actually need  including type validation against your real AEP schema, a check most beacon debuggers don't offer.

FEATURES
- Auto-captures AEP Web SDK calls (interact / collect)  request and response
- Datastream ID pinned to the top of every beacon
- Filter attributes to just xdm or query (or any namespace), hide empty values, full-text search
- Flat or collapsible tree view, with an option to strip the tenant prefix
- Identity & consent spotlight  ECID, identity namespaces, and consent state, with warnings when something is missing
- Validation / linting  flags missing eventType, missing ECID, and data drift across beacons
- Beacon timeline with double-fire detection (helps catch dual-TMS and consent-timing issues)
- Diff two beacons  see exactly what changed between fires
- Pinned variables that float to the top across every beacon
- Export selected beacons as JSON or CSV
- XDM schema validation  compares the data types your site sends against your AEP schema, flagging type mismatches and fields that aren't in the schema (which get dropped on ingestion)

SCHEMA VALIDATION
Connect to your AEP org with built-in sandbox and schema pickers, or simply load an exported XDM schema JSON file. Beacon type-checks each field on the selected beacon and shows matches, type mismatches, empty fields, and fields not present in the schema.

PRIVACY
Beacon runs entirely inside your browser's DevTools. It does not collect, sell, or transmit your browsing data, and it shows no ads. The optional "Connect to AEP" feature uses Adobe's own sign-in (OAuth) and calls only Adobe's APIs (ims-na1.adobelogin.com and platform.adobe.io) to list your sandboxes and schemas; access tokens are stored locally in your browser. If you don't use that feature, Beacon makes no network calls beyond the traffic you're already inspecting.

PERMISSIONS
- storage — saves your settings and pinned variables locally
- identity — runs the Adobe sign-in popup for schema validation
- ims-na1.adobelogin.com and platform.adobe.io — fetches your sandboxes and XDM schemas after you sign in

Beacon is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Adobe. Adobe, Adobe Experience Platform, and related names are trademarks of Adobe, used here only to describe compatibility.