> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.streambuild.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Messages

> Search and inspect source records retained in ClickHouse.

Open **Messages** from a managed [source](/ui/sources) to query records retained in its ClickHouse
landing table. The browser supports:

* JSON field predicates and value facets
* landed-at and broker timestamp ranges
* partition and offset ranges
* stable preview columns
* cursor pagination
* full-record inspection up to 16 MiB

Message searches read `raw__<source>` landing history. They do not query Kafka, change a consumer
group, or alter the source. Broker inventory, consumer lag, and retained-message queries remain
separate operations so one unavailable signal does not disable the others.

<Frame>
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/streambuild-docs/kVzXMKCtyf9x5Cii/images/ui/source-messages-dark.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=kVzXMKCtyf9x5Cii&q=85&s=ce4e213488aca02dcb23d45522b67a2b" alt="Expanded retained JSON message with Kafka and landing metadata" width="1440" height="960" data-path="images/ui/source-messages-dark.png" />
</Frame>

<Note>
  Retained-message visibility is bounded by the source landing TTL. The browser cannot recover data
  that ClickHouse has already expired.
</Note>

See [Topics](/ui/topics) for broker-only metadata and [Replay and Lineage](/concepts/replay-lineage)
for normalized replay columns and boundary semantics.