Designing an audit trail people actually read

Most audit logs are written for machines. They list events and timestamps, and nobody reads them until something goes wrong. We wanted a log that people open on a normal day.

Write it in plain language

Each step in a Cinder run reads like a sentence: invoice received from Northwind, total matched to the purchase order, sent to Marcus for approval. A new teammate can follow it without training.

Show what changed, not everything

We hide routine events by default and surface the moments that matter, such as an approval, a skipped step or a value that was corrected. The full detail is still one click away.

Questions or ideas? Email hello@cinder.ai and we’ll write back.