Skip to content
Get packs

Observability and Instrumentation

Makes the agent add logs, metrics, traces and alerts so production problems can be diagnosed.

Source Download skill
Repository
addyosmani/agent-skills
Stars
112,668
Licence
MIT
Files
1 file

What it does

When installed, the agent plans and writes telemetry alongside new code instead of as an afterthought. It has you list the questions on-call engineers will ask, then picks the right mix of structured logs, metrics and traces, with consistent log levels, request correlation IDs, RED/USE metrics and low-cardinality labels. It also warns against logging secrets or personal data.

Great for

  • Engineers building services, endpoints or background jobs that will run in production
  • Teams whose incidents take too long to diagnose because the data is missing
  • Developers reviewing pull requests that add I/O, retries, queues or cross-service calls

Skip it if

  • Diagnosing an outage happening right now; the file points to the debugging-and-error-recovery skill for that
  • Optimizing measured slowness; the file points to performance-optimization instead
  • Non-developers or projects with no production service, since the guidance assumes running systems

Try asking

  • “Add structured logging and a request ID to this new checkout payment flow”
  • “Review this PR that adds a retry queue and tell me what metrics and alerts it needs”
  • “Set up RED metrics for our HTTP endpoints using OpenTelemetry”
Step-by-step guide: how to use Observability and InstrumentationInstall, first run, examples, tips and FAQs

Install in 3 steps

  1. 1

    Download the skill

    The ZIP contains the 1 original files, the MIT licence and an attribution note.

    observability-and-instrumentation.zip
  2. 2

    Add it to your agent

    Claude Code (all projects)

    mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && unzip observability-and-instrumentation.zip -d ~/.claude/skills/

    Claude Code / Agent SDK (this project only)

    mkdir -p .claude/skills && unzip observability-and-instrumentation.zip -d .claude/skills/

    Claude apps (web/desktop): Settings → Capabilities → Skills → Upload skill, and choose the ZIP.

  3. 3

    Ask for the task

    No special command needed — the agent reads the skill's description and loads it when your request matches. Try one of the prompts above.

Get better results

  • Name the questions your on-call engineer will ask before asking the agent to add any telemetry, so it can tie each signal to a question
  • Tell the agent which logging and metrics libraries your project already uses so it follows your conventions
  • Ask the agent to review existing log lines for secrets or personal data before shipping

What's inside

  • SKILL.md

Redistributed unmodified from addyosmani/agent-skills under the MIT licence. The assessment was drafted with AI from the skill's files on 2026-10-29. Skills can instruct your agent to run code — read SKILL.md and any scripts before installing.