Session Replay can generate a natural-language summary of an individual replay so you can understand what happened in a session without watching it in full.
Each summary describes the visitor's journey as a chronological list of key moments, and highlights frustration signals and developer log errors when they're present. Use summaries to decide which replays are worth watching and to share what you find with your team.
Note: Replay summaries are available in open beta to subscriptions with Session Replay. A subscription admin turns the feature on with the Replay summaries and descriptions setting under Settings > Subscription settings > AI access.
Use cases
Replay summaries help you get value from Session Replay data faster. Common uses include:
- Triage replays before watching. Read a summary to judge whether a replay is relevant before you invest time in playback. This is useful when you have long or high-volume replays to review.
- Understand a session quickly. See the visitor's path through your app, where they encounter frustration, and where errors occurred, as a short list of key moments.
- Share findings with your team. Copy a summary with its replay link to pass context to product, design, or support colleagues.
How it works
Pendo generates a summary automatically in the background when you play a replay. You can also generate one on demand from the replay library to review a replay before you watch it.
Each summary is a chronological list of up to 10 key moments rather than a full readout of the event log. Its length varies with the replay's duration and active time. A summary describes the visitor's Pendo event sequence, along with frustration signals and developer log errors when Developer tools are turned on for your application. Frustrations you've marked as ignored aren't included.
When you generate a summary from the library, Pendo uses your active filters as context. The summary then reflects the Pages, Features, or frustration types you're focused on. After a replay is summarized, anyone in your subscription can view the same summary without generating it again.
Pendo generates each summary in the locale of the user who requests it. Before processing, Pendo removes visible text and certain element attributes from the replay data. For details on how Pendo handles data in AI features, see Artificial intelligence (AI) at Pendo.
Note: Each subscription can generate up to 200 replay summaries per hour.
Before you begin
To generate replay summaries, make sure:
- Session Replay is activated for your app.
- A subscription admin has turned on Replay summaries and descriptions under Settings > Subscription settings > AI access.
- You're a subscription admin or app admin, or you have the Replay User permission.
- Developer tools (console and network logs) are turned on for the app if you want summaries to include developer log errors. For more information, see Use developer tools in Session Replay.
Summarize a replay from the library
You generate and regenerate summaries from the replay library.
- Go to Replay > Library.
- In the Replays table, find the replay you want to summarize.
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Select Summarize for that replay. The AI summary opens in a side panel as a list of key moments. If a
summary already exists, select View summary instead.
- Select a timestamp in a key moment to go to that point in the replay.
- To copy the summary and the replay link, select the copy icon in the top-right corner of the side panel.
- Rate the summary with the thumbs up or thumbs down option at the bottom of the panel.
Regenerate a summary
Regenerate a summary to reflect the most recent context in and around a replay, such as updated library filters.
- Go to Replay > Library.
- Select View summary for the replay.
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In the summary side panel, select the Regenerate summary refresh icon next to the Key moments header.
Note: You can regenerate a summary only from the replay library, not from the replay player.
View a summary in the player
When you play a replay, Pendo generates the summary in the background and shows it in the Summary tab.
- Open the replay from the library.
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Select the Summary tab next to Event log.
- Select a timestamp in the summary to go to that moment in the replay.
You can view and navigate the summary in the player, but you can't regenerate it there. To regenerate a summary, use the replay library.
Summarize replays through the Pendo MCP server
If the Pendo MCP server is turned on for your subscription, you can generate a replay summary from your own AI tools with the sessionReplaySummarize tool, the same way you can in the UI. It returns a chronological summary with links to the highlighted moments.
When you find a replay using library filters, your AI client can pass those filters so the summary uses them as context. The 200-summary hourly limit applies to MCP requests as well. For more information, see Pendo MCP tools for AI agents and Overview of the Pendo MCP server.