Agent skill · data analytics · sickn33
service-mesh-observability
Complete guide to observability patterns for Istio, Linkerd, and service mesh deployments.
Why this skill is useful
Provides specific observability patterns and templates for Istio and Linkerd that the AI wouldn't reliably generate on its own.
What it needs
Requires grafana, jaeger, prometheus installed locally. About 4k tokens when loaded. Last updated 2026-08-07. 44,571 stars on the source repository.
What this skill does
Service Mesh Observability Complete guide to observability patterns for Istio, Linkerd, and service mesh deployments. Do not use this skill when The task is unrelated to service mesh observability You need a different domain or tool outside this scope Instructions Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs. Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes. Provide actionable steps and verification. Use this skill when Setting up distributed tracing across services Implementing service mesh metrics and dashboards Debugging latency and error issues Defining SLOs for service communication Visualizing service dependencies Troubleshooting mesh connectivity Core Concepts 1. Three Pillars of Observability 2. Golden Signals for Mesh Signal Description Alert Threshold -------- ------------- ----------------- Latency Request duration P50, P99 P99 > 500ms Traffic Requests per second Anomaly detection Errors 5xx error rate > 1% Saturation Resource utilization > 80% Templates Template 1: Istio with Prometheus & Grafana Template 2: Key Istio Metrics Queries Template 3: Jaeger Distributed Tracing Template 4: Linkerd Viz Dashboard Template 5: Grafana Dashboard JSON Template 6: Kiali Service Mesh Visualization Template 7: OpenTelemetry Integration Alerting Rules Best Practices Do's Sample appropriately - 100% in dev, 1-10% in prod Use trace context - Propagate headers consistently Set up alerts - For golden signals Correlate metrics/traces - Use exemplars Retain strategically - Hot/cold storage tiers Don'ts Don't over-sample - Storage costs add up Don't ignore cardinality - Limit label values Don't skip dashboards - Visualize dependencies Don't forget costs - Monitor observability costs Resources Istio Observability Linkerd Observability OpenTelemetry Kiali Limitations Use this skill only when the task clearly matches the scope described above. Do not treat the output as a substitute for environment-specific validation, testing, or expert review. …
How to use it
Reference it in AdaL, Claude Code, Cursor or any coding agent — nothing to install:
@skills sickn33/service-mesh-observability--bc688d