| name | observability-designer |
| description | SLO/SLI design, alert optimization, and dashboard generation for production services.
TRIGGER when: user asks to define SLOs, design alerts, create dashboards, reduce alert fatigue, set error budgets, or improve observability; user runs /observability or /slo.
DO NOT TRIGGER when: debugging a specific incident (use debugging tools), writing application code, configuring CI/CD pipelines.
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| metadata | {"author":"DROOdotFOO","version":"1.0.0","tags":"observability,slo,sli,alerting,dashboards,monitoring,sre"} |
Observability Designer Skill
Design production observability from first principles: define what to measure, set targets, build alerts that do not page unnecessarily, and create dashboards that answer questions at a glance.
Workflow
- Define SLIs -- Identify the indicators that reflect user experience. See slo-framework.md.
- Set SLO targets -- Choose realistic targets based on business requirements and historical data.
- Design alerts -- Build burn-rate alerts that catch real problems without fatigue. See alert-design.md.
- Create dashboards -- Organize metrics into role-appropriate views. See dashboard-design.md.
- Iterate -- Review error budget consumption monthly. Adjust targets and alert thresholds based on operational data.
Core Principle
Observe from the user's perspective inward:
User request -> Load balancer -> API gateway -> Service -> Database
^ |
|_____________ This is what you measure first ___________|
Start with the outermost boundary (what the user experiences), then add internal signals only where they help diagnose problems faster.
Output Format
Service: payment-api
SLIs: availability (success rate), latency (P99), throughput
SLO: 99.9% availability over 30-day rolling window
Error budget: 43.2 minutes/month
Alert: burn rate >14.4x over 1h AND >6x over 6h -> page
Dashboard: 4 panels (availability, latency distribution, error rate, saturation)
What You Get
- SLI/SLO definitions with error budgets tailored to business requirements and historical performance data.
- Burn-rate alert configurations designed to minimize false positives and pager fatigue.
- Dashboard layouts organized by role (on-call, product, executive) with actionable panels for availability, latency, and saturation.
Sub-files
