Buildkite Logs

Authentication

All requests require BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN. The token is read-only for most operations; a read-write token is needed to trigger retries.

bash

# Check for token
if [ -z "$BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN" ]; then
  echo "Set BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN before proceeding."
  exit 1
fi
BK_AUTH="Authorization: Bearer $BUILDKITE_API_TOKEN"
ORG="elastic"
PIPELINE="kibana-pull-request"
BASE="https://api.buildkite.com/v2"

If the token is missing, ask the user to export it:

You can create a token at https://buildkite.com/user/api-access-tokens (scope: read_builds, read_artifacts).

Fetch build by number

bash

BUILD_NUMBER=<number>
curl -sf -H "$BK_AUTH" \
  "$BASE/organizations/$ORG/pipelines/$PIPELINE/builds/$BUILD_NUMBER" \
  | jq '{number,state,branch,commit,created_at,web_url,jobs:[.jobs[]|{id,name,state,exit_status,web_url}]}'

To get a build number from a Buildkite URL like https://buildkite.com/elastic/kibana-pull-request/builds/414685, extract 414685.

Fetch latest build for a PR

bash

PR=<number>
curl -sf -H "$BK_AUTH" \
  "$BASE/organizations/$ORG/pipelines/$PIPELINE/builds?pull_request_id=$PR&per_page=1" \
  | jq '.[0] | {number,state,branch,web_url,jobs:[.jobs[]|{id,name,state,exit_status}]}'

Fetch job log

Once you have a build number and job ID:

bash

BUILD_NUMBER=<number>
JOB_ID=<uuid>
curl -sf -H "$BK_AUTH" \
  "$BASE/organizations/$ORG/pipelines/$PIPELINE/builds/$BUILD_NUMBER/jobs/$JOB_ID/log" \
  | jq -r '.content'

Logs can be large. Pipe through tail -n 200 or search with grep/rg for relevant sections:

bash

... | jq -r '.content' | grep -A 5 -i "error\|fail\|FAIL\|exception"

Workflow: diagnose a failing build

Get build overview (fetch build by number or PR, see above).
Identify failed jobs: filter jobs where state == "failed".
Fetch log for each failed job and search for the first error/failure.
Summarise: report job name, exit code, and the key error lines.

For large logs, focus on the last 200–500 lines plus any lines matching error, FAIL, AssertionError, TypeError, or ✖.

Workflow: understand job definition for PR build

Analyse .buildkite/pipelines/pull_request/base.yml
Analyse any relevant yml files in the folder

List and download artifacts

bash

BUILD_NUMBER=<number>
# List artifacts for the build
curl -sf -H "$BK_AUTH" \
  "$BASE/organizations/$ORG/pipelines/$PIPELINE/builds/$BUILD_NUMBER/artifacts" \
  | jq '.[] | {id,filename,file_size,download_url}'

# Download a specific artifact
ARTIFACT_ID=<uuid>
curl -sL -H "$BK_AUTH" \
  "$BASE/organizations/$ORG/pipelines/$PIPELINE/builds/$BUILD_NUMBER/artifacts/$ARTIFACT_ID/download" \
  -o <filename>

Artifacts for a single job:

bash

JOB_ID=<uuid>
curl -sf -H "$BK_AUTH" \
  "$BASE/organizations/$ORG/pipelines/$PIPELINE/builds/$BUILD_NUMBER/jobs/$JOB_ID/artifacts" \
  | jq '.[] | {id,filename,file_size,download_url}'

Other pipelines

Kibana has multiple pipelines. Common slugs:

Pipeline	Slug
PR	`kibana-pull-request`
On-merge	`kibana-on-merge`
Flaky test runner	`kibana-flaky-test-suite-runner`

Substitute the PIPELINE variable as needed.