dd-apm

name	dd-apm
description	APM - traces, services, dependencies, performance analysis.
metadata	{"version":"1.0.0","author":"datadog-labs","repository":"https://github.com/datadog-labs/agent-skills","tags":"datadog,apm,tracing,performance,distributed-tracing,dd-apm","globs":"**/ddtrace*,**/datadog*.yaml,**/*trace*","alwaysApply":"false"}

Datadog APM

Distributed tracing, service maps, and performance analysis.

Requirements

Datadog Labs Pup should be installed via:

go install github.com/datadog-labs/pup@latest

Quick Start

pup auth login
pup apm services list
pup apm traces list --service api-gateway --duration 1h

Services

List Services

pup apm services list
pup apm services list --env production

Service Details

pup apm services get api-gateway --json

Service Map

# View dependencies
pup apm service-map --service api-gateway --json

Traces

Search Traces

# By service
pup apm traces list --service api-gateway --duration 1h

# Errors only
pup apm traces list --service api-gateway --status error

# Slow traces (>1s)
pup apm traces list --service api-gateway --min-duration 1000ms

# With specific tag
pup apm traces list --query "@http.url:/api/users"

Get Trace Detail

pup apm traces get <trace_id> --json

Key Metrics

Metric	What It Measures
trace.http.request.hits	Request count
trace.http.request.duration	Latency
trace.http.request.errors	Error count
trace.http.request.apdex	User satisfaction

⚠️ Trace Sampling

Not all traces are kept. Understand sampling:

Mode	What's Kept
Head-based	Random % at start
Error/Slow	All errors, slow traces
Retention	What's indexed (billed)

# Check retention filters
pup apm retention-filters list

Trace Retention Costs

Retention	Cost
Indexed spans	$$$ per million
Ingested spans	$ per million

Best practice: Only index what you need for search.

Service Level Objectives

Link APM to SLOs:

pup slos create \
  --name "API Latency p99 < 200ms" \
  --type metric \
  --numerator "sum:trace.http.request.hits{service:api,@duration:<200000000}" \
  --denominator "sum:trace.http.request.hits{service:api}" \
  --target 99.0

Common Queries

Goal	Query
Slowest endpoints	avg:trace.http.request.duration{*} by {resource_name}
Error rate	sum:trace.http.request.errors{*} / sum:trace.http.request.hits{*}
Throughput	sum:trace.http.request.hits{*}.as_rate()

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
No traces	Check ddtrace installed, DD_TRACE_ENABLED=true
Missing service	Verify DD_SERVICE env var
Traces not linked	Check trace headers propagated
High cardinality	Don't tag with user_id/request_id

References/Docs

• APM Setup
• Trace Search
• Retention Filters