name	wide-events
description	Conceptual guide to wide events (canonical log lines) for observability. Use when thinking about instrumentation strategy, span annotations, or designing what context to capture. Use when this capability is needed.
metadata	{"author":"kriegcloud"}

traditional := many(log-lines) → grep(services) → hope wide := one(event) → query(structured) → answer

optimize(querying) ∧ ¬optimize(writing)

implementation := OTel spans + annotations wide-events := mental-model for annotation strategy

annotate(span, context) where context = { business ∪ user ∪ technical ∪ outcome }

wide-event.fields := { identity: {traceId, spanId, service, operation} user: {userId, accountTier, accountAge, lifetimeValue} business: {featureFlags, experimentGroup, cartValue} performance: {durationMs, dbQueryCount, cacheHitRate, retryCount} outcome: {success, errorCode, httpStatus} }

high-dimensionality → better-queryability high-cardinality(userId) → acceptable

scattered-logs := console.log("step1") >> console.log("step2") >> ... low-dimensionality := span.set("success", true) ∧ |fields| < 5 technical-only := {http.status, db.queries} ∧ ¬{user, business} span.setAttributes({ "request.operation", "user.id", "user.tier", "cart.items", "cart.value", "feature.*", "db.query_count", "cache.hit_rate", "request.success" })

∀ span → attach(identity ∪ user ∪ business ∪ performance ∪ outcome)

retain(100%) := errors ∨ slow(>p99) ∨ vip retain(1-5%) := success ∧ fast before(instrument) → verify(answerable({ "failures where tier=premium ∧ feature.new_flow=true" "p99(latency) group by tier" "errors group by featureFlags" "full context for user X incident" }))

¬queryable → ¬enough-context

cardinality := |unique values| (userId=high, httpMethod=low) dimensionality := |fields per event| (more → better) wide-event := canonical-log-line := one comprehensive record deciding(span-annotations) reviewing(instrumentation-coverage) debugging(incidents) → "what context was missing?" planning(new-service-observability) choosing(fields-to-index)

Reference: See Article.md for full article by Boris Tane (loggingsucks.com)

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name	wide-events
description	Conceptual guide to wide events (canonical log lines) for observability. Use when thinking about instrumentation strategy, span annotations, or designing what context to capture. Use when this capability is needed.
metadata	{"author":"kriegcloud"}