Rails.error.report severity classification uncertainty in retry-prone deployments

Answer

In Rails 7.0+ the default paging trigger is severity :error (and :critical). Whether an exception is treated as a business error or a framework error depends on the severity mapping you configure in config.active_support.error_reporter. A stable fingerprint across retries and deploys is built from controller/action (or job class) together with a propagated request‑id (or job id/retry count) and a tenant identifier. To avoid PII leakage while preserving grouping, delete or hash known PII keys in the error payload and keep only non‑PII context such as controller, action, job class, tenant id, and any custom error code.

Confirmed facts

• The built‑in default paging threshold is :error and :critical (research brief).
• A stable fingerprint can be formed from [controller_name, action_name, request_id, tenant_id] for web requests or [job_class, job_id (or retry count), tenant_id] for background jobs, provided the request‑id is propagated unchanged across retries (research brief).
• Sanitisation is achieved by removing or hashing PII keys (e.g., :email, :ip_address, :user_id, :phone) and replacing their values with a cryptographic hash (SHA‑256) while retaining non‑PII keys (research brief).

Likely explanation / application‑specific steps

1. Check your current severity mapping: Rails.application.config.active_support.error_reporter.severity. If you have not overridden it, only :error and :critical will trigger paging.
2. For business exceptions you want to page, map them to :error (or :critical) in that configuration; framework‑only errors can stay at :warning or lower.
3. Ensure your request‑id (e.g., via X-Request-ID header) is set at the start of the request/job and is not regenerated on each retry.
4. In each Rails.error.subscribe handler, construct a fingerprint string like:

fingerprint = Digest::SHA256.hexdigest([controller, action, request_id, tenant_id].join('|'))

1. To sanitise context, iterate over the payload hash and for any key listed in a PII denylist replace its value with Digest::SHA256.hexdigest(value) (optionally salted) and then delete the original key.

Missing diagnostic detail

If you are unsure whether your application has already remapped severity levels, please provide the current value of Rails.application.config.active_support.error_reporter.severity. This determines whether the default :error threshold applies or if a custom threshold is in effect, which directly influences the paging decision.