# Breadcrumbs | Sentry for PowerShell

Sentry uses *breadcrumbs* to create a trail of events that happened prior to an issue. These events are very similar to traditional logs, but can record more rich structured data.

This page provides an overview of manual breadcrumb recording and customization. Learn more about the information that displays on the **Issue Details** page and how you can filter breadcrumbs to quickly resolve issues in [Using Breadcrumbs](https://docs.sentry.io/product/error-monitoring/breadcrumbs.md).

##### Learn about SDK usage

Developers who want to modify the breadcrumbs interface can learn more in our [developer documentation about the Breadcrumbs Interface](https://develop.sentry.dev/sdk/data-model/event-payloads/breadcrumbs.md).

## [Manual Breadcrumbs](https://docs.sentry.io/.md#manual-breadcrumbs)

You can manually add breadcrumbs whenever something interesting happens. For example, you might manually record a breadcrumb if the user authenticates or another state change occurs.

Manually record a breadcrumb:

```powershell
# Simple breadcrumb with just a message
'hello there' | Add-SentryBreadcrumb

# More complext breadcrumb
Add-SentryBreadcrumb -Message 'hello there' -Category 'cat' -Type 'foo' -Level Warning -Data @{ 'key' = 'value' }
```

## [Customize Breadcrumbs](https://docs.sentry.io/.md#customize-breadcrumbs)

SDKs allow you to customize breadcrumbs through the `BeforeBreadcrumb` hook.

This hook is passed an already assembled breadcrumb and, in some SDKs, an optional hint. The function can modify the breadcrumb or decide to discard it entirely by returning `null`:

```powershell
Start-Sentry {
    $_.SetBeforeBreadcrumb([System.Func[Sentry.Breadcrumb, Sentry.Breadcrumb]] {
            param([Sentry.Breadcrumb]$breadcrumb)
            # Ignore breadcrumbs from Spammy logger
            if ($breadcrumb.Category -eq "Spammy.Logger") {
                return $null
            }
            return $breadcrumb
        });
}
```
