Audit panels instrumentation for production usage

Author: tim-schillingCreated Sep 19, 2025Updated Aug 30, 2026
LabelsDocumentationBeginner friendly

We should audit each panel for how early they start instrumenting their areas and determine if the toolbar can reliably be installed in a production environment, but disabled via SHOW_TOOLBAR_CALLBACK. This is in reference to #1375.

We would want know the following for each of the panels:

  • Does the panel set up its instrumentation on project start or on enable_panel?
  • Can the instrumentation be disabled entirely?
  • Does the instrumentation monkeypatch something?

To conclude this effort, we should document the findings on a new documentation page for production use. If this means we provide a configuration setting that has the non-production friendly panels excluded, that would be great.

Source: django-commons/django-debug-toolbar