| name | skill-observability |
| description | Metrics, logging, distributed tracing, dashboards, alerting, SLO-driven observability, post-incident analysis. Use when designing monitoring, setting up dashboards, creating alert rules, or analyzing production data. |
| version | 1.0.0 |
Skill: Observability (Metrics, Logs, Traces)
Three pillars: Metrics (what), Logs (why), Traces (how). Use all three.
Metrics (Time-Series Data)
Key metrics:
- Request latency (p50, p95, p99)
- Error rate (%)
- Throughput (req/s)
- Resource (CPU, memory, disk)
Collection: Prometheus, StatsD, CloudWatch
api_latency_seconds{service="auth", endpoint="/login"} = 0.042
error_rate{service="api"} = 0.001
db_connections{pool="default"} = 42
Logging (Structured)
Format: JSON for parsing
{
"timestamp": "2024-01-15T10:30:45Z",
"level": "ERROR",
"service": "user-service",
"message": "Failed to create user",
"error": "database_error",
"user_id": "user-123",
"duration_ms": 150
}
Sampling: Log 100% errors, 1% normal (reduce volume)
Distributed Tracing
Trace request end-to-end:
Request: POST /api/users
├─ Auth span (5ms)
├─ Validate span (2ms)
├─ DB insert span (45ms)
│ ├─ Connection span (1ms)
│ └─ Query span (44ms)
└─ Cache update span (3ms)
Total: 55ms
Tools: Jaeger, Zipkin, Datadog
Dashboards (SLO-Focused)
What to display:
- SLO % (100% target, 99% actual)
- Error budget consumed (%)
- Latency (p95, p99)
- Errors per minute
- Active requests
- Alert status
Tools: Grafana, CloudWatch, Datadog
Alerting
Good alert (actionable):
Alert: DB connection pool > 80%
Severity: CRITICAL
Action: Increase pool size or check for connection leaks
Runbook: https://wiki.example.com/alerts/db-pool-high
Bad alert (not actionable):
Alert: Disk usage > 50%
(What should I do?)
SLO-Driven Alerting
SLO: 99.9% uptime
Error budget: 8.64 hours/month
Alert: If burn rate > 1% → 30 days to fail budget
Alert: If burn rate > 10% → 3 days to fail budget
Monitoring Checklist
Status: Ready for observability work
Best for: Metrics, logging, alerting, SLO monitoring
