observability-lgtm

Set up a full local observability stack (Loki + Grafana + Tempo + Prometheus + Alloy) for FastAPI apps on macOS (Apple Silicon) or Linux. One command to start, one import to instrument any app. Logs → Loki, metrics → Prometheus, traces → Tempo, all unified in Grafana.

When to use

• User is building a FastAPI web app and wants logs, metrics, and traces
• User wants a local Grafana dashboard without setting up ELK (too heavy)
• User wants to correlate logs ↔ traces ↔ metrics in one UI
• User has multiple local apps and wants universal observability

When NOT to use

• Production cloud deployments (use managed Grafana Cloud or Datadog instead)
• Non-Python apps (the Python lib only works for FastAPI; the stack itself is language-agnostic)
• When Docker is not available

Prerequisites

• Docker + Docker Compose v2 installed
• Python 3.10+ (for the instrumentation lib)
• FastAPI app to instrument

What gets installed

Steps

Step 1 — Check for port conflicts

lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -n -P 2>/dev/null | grep -E ":(3000|3300|9091|4317|4318|12345)" | awk '{print $9, $1}'

If any of the ports above are in use, update the relevant port in docker-compose.yml and the matching url: in config/grafana/provisioning/datasources/datasources.yml. Common conflicts: Langfuse on 3100, MinIO on 9090.

Step 2 — Copy the stack

Copy these files from the skill directory into a projects/observability/ folder in the workspace:

• assets/docker-compose.yml
• assets/config/ (entire directory tree)
• assets/lib/observability.py
• assets/scripts/register_app.sh

mkdir -p projects/observability
cp -r SKILL_DIR/assets/* projects/observability/
mkdir -p projects/observability/logs
touch projects/observability/logs/.gitkeep
chmod +x projects/observability/scripts/register_app.sh

Step 3 — Start the stack

cd projects/observability
docker compose up -d

Wait ~15 seconds for all services to start, then verify:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "Grafana: %{http_code}\n"    http://localhost:3000/api/health
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "Prometheus: %{http_code}\n" http://localhost:9091/-/healthy
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "Loki: %{http_code}\n"       http://localhost:3300/ready
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "Tempo: %{http_code}\n"      http://localhost:4318/ready

All should return 200. If Loki or Tempo return 503, wait 10 more seconds and retry (they have a slower startup than Grafana/Prometheus).

Step 4 — Install Python deps for the app

pip install \
  "prometheus-fastapi-instrumentator>=7.0.0" \
  "opentelemetry-sdk>=1.25.0" \
  "opentelemetry-exporter-otlp-proto-grpc>=1.25.0" \
  "opentelemetry-instrumentation-fastapi>=0.46b0" \
  "python-json-logger>=2.0.7"

Step 5 — Instrument the FastAPI app

Add to the app's app.py (or main.py), just after app = FastAPI(...):

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, "path/to/projects/observability/lib")
from observability import setup_observability
logger = setup_observability(app, service_name="my-service-name")

That's it. The app now:

• Exposes /metrics for Prometheus
• Writes JSON logs to projects/observability/logs/my-service-name/app.log
• Sends traces to Tempo on localhost:4317

Step 6 — Register with Prometheus

cd projects/observability
./scripts/register_app.sh my-service-name <port>
# e.g.: ./scripts/register_app.sh image-gen-studio 7860

Prometheus hot-reloads the target within 30 seconds. Verify:

curl -s "http://localhost:9091/api/v1/targets" | python3 -c "
import json, sys
data = json.load(sys.stdin)
for t in data['data']['activeTargets']:
    svc = t['labels'].get('service', '')
    print(svc, '->', t['health'])
"

Step 7 — Open Grafana

Open http://localhost:3000

The FastAPI — App Overview dashboard is pre-loaded. Select your service from the dropdown at the top. You'll see:

• Request rate (req/s)
• Error rate (%)
• Latency p50/p95/p99
• Requests by endpoint
• HTTP status codes
• Live log panel (Loki)

To jump from a log line to its trace: click the trace_id link in the log detail panel. It opens the full trace in Tempo automatically (datasource pre-wired).

Step 8 — Import additional dashboards (optional)

In Grafana → Dashboards → Import:

• 16110 — FastAPI Observability (richer alternative to the built-in)
• 13407 — Loki Logs Overview
• 16112 — Tempo Service Graph (service dependency map)

Useful commands

# Reload Prometheus config after registering a new app:
curl -s -X POST http://localhost:9091/-/reload

# Restart a single service without losing data:
docker compose -f projects/observability/docker-compose.yml restart grafana

# Stop everything (data volumes preserved):
docker compose -f projects/observability/docker-compose.yml down

# Nuclear reset (wipes all stored data):
docker compose -f projects/observability/docker-compose.yml down -v

# Check Alloy log shipping status:
open http://localhost:12345

Manual tracing (optional)

from observability import get_tracer
tracer = get_tracer(__name__)

@app.get("/expensive-endpoint")
async def handler():
    with tracer.start_as_current_span("db-query") as span:
        span.set_attribute("db.table", "users")
        result = await db.query(...)
    return result

Log/trace correlation

The OTel instrumentation injects trace_id into every log record. Grafana Loki is pre-configured with a derived field that turns "trace_id":"abc123" into a clickable link to the Tempo trace.

To manually include trace context in your own log calls:

from opentelemetry import trace

def trace_ctx() -> dict:
    ctx = trace.get_current_span().get_span_context()
    return {"trace_id": format(ctx.trace_id, "032x")} if ctx.is_valid else {}

logger.info("Processing request", extra=trace_ctx())

Notes

• Logs are written to projects/observability/logs/<service>/app.log as JSON. Alloy tails these files and ships to Loki — no code changes needed beyond setup_observability().
• All observability is local — no data leaves the machine.
• data_classification: LOCAL_ONLY is the default for all traces/logs.
• The Alloy config drops DEBUG-level logs by default. Edit config/alloy/config.alloy to remove the stage.drop block if you need debug logs.