Observability Metrics

Overview

Use this skill to define metrics that reflect real reliability and business impact, not vanity signals.

Scope Boundaries

• Use this skill when the task matches the trigger condition described in description.
• Do not use this skill when the primary task falls outside this skill's domain.

Shared References

• Metric cardinality and SLI rules:
  • references/metric-cardinality-and-sli-rules.md

Templates And Assets

• Metrics taxonomy template:
  • assets/metrics-taxonomy-template.csv
• Metrics quality checklist:
  • assets/metrics-quality-checklist.md

Inputs To Gather

• Service health objectives and user-impact expectations.
• Capacity and performance decision needs.
• Current metric set and cardinality risks.
• Dashboard and alert consumer requirements.

Deliverables

• Metrics taxonomy and ownership mapping.
• SLI-aligned metric set.
• Dashboard/alert readiness evidence.

Workflow

1. Define metric taxonomy in assets/metrics-taxonomy-template.csv.
2. Apply SLI/cardinality rules from references/metric-cardinality-and-sli-rules.md.
3. Validate coverage and quality with assets/metrics-quality-checklist.md.
4. Tune labels and aggregation for operability.
5. Publish metric governance and maintenance plan.

Quality Standard

• Metrics support reliability and capacity decisions.
• Label strategy avoids high-cardinality failure.
• Ownership and operational usage are explicit.

Failure Conditions

• Stop when key health indicators are missing or misleading.
• Stop when cardinality makes metrics operationally unstable.
• Escalate when metric gaps block incident response.