simulation-output-analyst

name	simulation-output-analyst
description	Interpret DSDS simulation outputs including summary metrics, per-node time series, traces, causal graphs, and invariant breaches. Use when reviewing run results, comparing design alternatives, diagnosing bottlenecks, and proposing mitigation steps.

Simulation Output Analyst

Overview

Analyze DSDS run outputs to identify bottlenecks, cascade roots, and mitigation priority. Produce evidence-backed findings from summary metrics, time series, traces, and causal artifacts.

Workflow

1. Verify run context

• Record scenario name, seed, duration, workload shape, and injected faults.
• Confirm comparison baseline before judging regressions.

2. Triage global health

• Check throughput, error rate, and latency percentiles first.
• Flag immediate SLO and invariant violations.

3. Localize bottlenecks

• Rank nodes by utilization, queue depth, rejection rate, and service-time inflation.
• Rank edges by latency growth, packet loss, and concurrency saturation.

4. Reconstruct failure chain

• Use traces and causal graph to determine trigger, first-order impact, and propagation path.
• Distinguish root cause from secondary symptoms (for example retry amplification).

5. Recommend mitigations

• Provide prioritized actions:
• Now: stop-the-bleed changes.
• Next: structural fixes.
• Later: optimization and cost tuning.
• Tie each action to the metric or failure mode it addresses.

6. Produce report

• Include findings by severity, evidence table, confidence level, unknowns, and next scenarios to verify fixes.

Analysis guardrails

• Do not claim causality without time-ordered evidence.
• Separate observed facts from inference.
• Call out missing telemetry explicitly.

References

• Read references/output-analysis-playbook.md for checklist and report template.
• Use these repo sources:
• docs/SYSTEM_OVERVIEW.md (analysis layer expectations)
• canonical-catalogue/DSDS Canonical Catalogue - Metrics & SLIs.csv
• canonical-catalogue/DSDS Canonical Catalogue - Simulation outputs.csv
• planning/IMPLEMENTATION_PLAN.md (Phase 6)