Agent skill · data analytics · erichowens
logging-observability
Structured logging, distributed tracing, and metrics for production applications. [What: OpenTelemetry setup, log level strategy, correlation IDs, SLI/SLO alerting thresholds, Grafana dashboard
Why this skill is useful
Adds specific OpenTelemetry setup procedures and alerting strategies that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires docker installed locally. About 6k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-07-14. 180 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Logging & Observability Structured logging, distributed tracing, and metrics for production systems. Covers the full observability stack from log formatting to alert routing. When to Use Activate on: "structured logging", "distributed tracing", "OpenTelemetry", "OTel", "correlation ID", "log levels", "Grafana dashboard", "alerting thresholds", "SLI SLO", "Prometheus metrics", "PagerDuty integration", "observability stack", "Winston setup", "Pino logger", "log aggregation", "Datadog", "Honeycomb" NOT for: Performance profiling (CPU/memory flamegraphs) Load testing Database query optimization Security auditing Decision Tree: What to Log at Each Level Rule of thumb: Production runs INFO and above. DEBUG only enabled per-service via dynamic config, never always-on in prod. Core Patterns Structured Log Format (JSON) Every log line must be parseable. String concatenation is not a log. Node.js with Pino: Python with structlog: Correlation IDs Every request needs a trace ID that flows through all downstream calls. This is the minimum viable distributed tracing without OTel. OpenTelemetry Setup See references/opentelemetry-setup.md for complete OTel collector config, SDK initialization per language, and span attribute conventions. Minimal Node.js bootstrap: Distributed Trace Propagation The W3C traceparent header format: 00-{traceId}-{spanId}-{flags}. Always propagate this header on every downstream HTTP call. Reference Files File Contents ------ ---------- references/opentelemetry-setup.md OTel SDK init per language, collector YAML config, span attributes, context propagation references/alerting-patterns.md SLI/SLO definitions, alert routing, PagerDuty severity mapping, alert fatigue prevention Anti-Patterns (Shibboleths) Anti-Pattern 1: Logging PII or Secrets in Production Novice thinking: "I'll just log the full request body to debug this auth issue." Why wrong: GDPR/CCPA violations carry fines up to 4% of global revenue. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills erichowens/logging-observability