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5. Laravel Telescope Alternatives: Building a Lightweight Request Inspector with Middleware

 Laravel Telescope Alternatives: Building a Lightweight Request Inspector with Middleware
=========================================================================================

 Telescope is powerful but heavy for production. Learn how to build a focused, low-overhead request inspector using middleware, a custom storage driver, and a Filament-powered UI.

 ![](https://cdn.msaied.com/01M22N44A70A5MC2S599JP0MPH.webp) [Mohamed Said](https://www.msaied.com/public#person) Published 16 Jun 2026 · Updated 16 Jun 2026 · 1 min read

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 ![Laravel Telescope Alternatives: Building a Lightweight Request Inspector with Middleware](https://cdn.msaied.com/216/9b6d240010b80483f072902dafcd216c.png) 

  On this page +1. [Why Not Just Use Telescope?](#why-not-just-use-telescope)
2. [Designing the Inspector](#designing-the-inspector)
3. [The Middleware](#the-middleware)
4. [The RequestStore](#the-requeststore)
5. [Filament Resource (Read-Only)](#filament-resource-read-only)
6. [Registering the Middleware](#registering-the-middleware)
7. [Key Takeaways](#key-takeaways)

 Why Not Just Use Telescope?
---------------------------

Laravel Telescope is excellent during local development, but its default `DatabaseWatcher` writes every request, query, and exception to your database synchronously. In production, that overhead compounds quickly — especially under load. Most teams either disable Telescope entirely or run it on a separate process with sampling, which adds operational complexity.

A focused, purpose-built inspector can give you 80% of the value at 10% of the cost. Here's how to build one.

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Designing the Inspector
-----------------------

The goal: capture HTTP request metadata (method, URI, status, duration, authenticated user, peak memory) and persist it asynchronously to a Redis sorted set, with a Filament table to browse recent entries.

Three moving parts:

1. **`InspectRequest` middleware** — measures and serialises the request.
2. **`RequestStore`** — a thin abstraction over Redis.
3. **A Filament resource** — reads from Redis and renders the table.

---

The Middleware
--------------

```php