Agent skill · software engineering · personamanagmentlayer
monitoring-expert
Expert-level monitoring and observability with Prometheus, Grafana, logging, and alerting. Use when the user mentions observability, Prometheus, Grafana, logging, metrics, or alerting, or when the task involves The Three Pillars of Observability, Monitoring Fundamentals, Prometheus Configuration, or Alert Rules.
Why this skill is useful
Adds executable Docker Compose scripts for setting up Prometheus, Grafana, and alerting systems that aren't in public docs.
What it needs
Requires docker installed locally. About 4k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-03-30. 41 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Monitoring Expert Expert guidance for monitoring, observability, and alerting using Prometheus, Grafana, logging systems, and distributed tracing. Core Concepts The Three Pillars of Observability 1. Metrics - Numerical measurements over time (Prometheus) 2. Logs - Discrete events (ELK, Loki) 3. Traces - Request flow through distributed systems (Jaeger, Tempo) Monitoring Fundamentals Golden Signals (Latency, Traffic, Errors, Saturation) RED Method (Rate, Errors, Duration) USE Method (Utilization, Saturation, Errors) Service Level Indicators (SLIs) Service Level Objectives (SLOs) Service Level Agreements (SLAs) Key Components Metric collection (exporters, agents) Time-series database Visualization (dashboards) Alerting (rules, receivers) Log aggregation Distributed tracing Alertmanager Configuration Grafana Dashboard Configuration (JSON) Provisioning Data Sources Logging with Loki Loki Configuration Promtail Configuration LogQL Queries Distributed Tracing Jaeger Setup Application Instrumentation (Node.js) Best Practices Metric Naming Use descriptive names: httprequeststotal not requests Use units in name: durationseconds, bytestotal Use total suffix for counters Use bucket suffix for histograms Use consistent label names Cardinality Avoid high-cardinality labels (user IDs, emails) Use bounded label values Aggregate when possible Monitor metric count Alert Design Alert on symptoms, not causes Set appropriate thresholds Include actionable annotations Group related alerts Use inhibition rules Dashboard Design One purpose per dashboard Use consistent time ranges Include SLOs/SLIs Add context with annotations Use appropriate visualization types Anti-Patterns to Avoid ❌ No SLOs: Define service level objectives ❌ Alert fatigue: Too many non-actionable alerts ❌ High cardinality: Labels with unbounded values ❌ Missing instrumentation: Instrument all critical paths ❌ No runbooks: Alerts should have clear remediation steps ❌ Ignoring trends: Monitor trends, not just current valu …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills personamanagmentlayer/monitoring-expert