When using the console appender ( which prepends the timestamp to the message string ) and the JSON pattern layout in CommandBox, for example, the @timestamp field is already present. Same if you change your default runwar pattern layout to include the timestamp. The JSON Pattern layout is used commonly with Elastic APM, AWS Cloudwatch, among others. The current result of a log message using the ConsoleAppender in the JSON Layout ends up looking like this in the APM and cloudwatch logs:

The Console appender also only can be assigned to two levels info or error . As such, it makes sense to add optional appenders that can leverage Runwar’s implementation ( e.g. Log4JAppender - and optionally one for Tomcat ) that will output to the console but will allow for more granular categorization of the log messages and leverage the API of the runtime loggers