Production monitoring lab
Add observability and tests
Metrics for alert_precision on game-day ≥ 0.9 and scrape_up == 1 must distinguish bad input from component failure for SRE watching error budget during a model bump.
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Golden signals for this system
Instrument Prometheus+Grafana board for AI answer API golden signals so SRE watching error budget during a model bump can answer: demand, errors, latency/age, saturation. Emit fields needed by alert_precision on game-day ≥ 0.9 and scrape_up == 1 with bounded labels. Sample successful high-volume traces; keep errors and rollout transitions denser within policy.
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Alert path worth paging
Define at least one alert that would fire for MON-TENANT-BLIND-9, with a for/pending window that survives deploy blips. Missing scrape or missing revision labels must not look like health. Include a trace/log example id format you will actually search.
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Implementation artifact
{"panel":"p95_ttft","query":"histogram_quantile(0.95, sum(rate(ttft_seconds_bucket[5m])) by (le))"}
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Tests for telemetry
Add a unit/integration check that metrics increment on the happy path and on the dashboard averages hide tenant Acme 40% error rate branch. Store machine-readable output in CI artifacts when practical.
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Stage depth
Cardinality discipline: tenant and revision are usually enough; raw question text is not a label. Exemplars or trace links beat screenshots alone when debugging MON-TENANT-BLIND-9. Define who owns alert fatigue review. If you export to a vendor, record retention and access. Synthetic probes should use non-sensitive fixtures and still exercise GET /metrics. Practice the query you will type at 2am once, while calm.
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Field notes for `production-monitoring-lab` / `observability`
Document the exact PromQL or log query in the runbook stub for this service. Verify histograms have buckets around your SLO target. Add a canary synthetic check that exercises the oracle path every few minutes in staging. Confirm that PII redaction happens before export. Track build/version as a label on the golden signals. Delete noisy debug logs before they become accidental product dependencies. In this chapter the product is Prometheus+Grafana board for AI answer API golden signals, the human stakeholder is SRE watching error budget during a model bump, and the incident id you design against is MON-TENANT-BLIND-9. Re-state the oracle in your notes — inject 5% 500s for 10m → Alert AnswerErrorBurn fires; recovery clears within 15m — and keep the invariant visible: alerts require multi-window evidence; missing scrape ≠ healthy silence. Track alert_precision on game-day ≥ 0.9 and scrape_up == 1 as the scoreboard. Surface under change control: GET /metrics. If you only have forty minutes, finish the fixture for dashboard averages hide tenant Acme 40% error rate before polishing UI. Promotion language stays ternary: promote, hold, or roll back based on evidence, not hope.
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Why this matters
Name the dashboard row or log line SRE watching error budget during a model bump opens first during MON-TENANT-BLIND-9. It must include a correlation id and a bounded label from alert_precision on game-day ≥ 0.9 and scrape_up == 1. If telemetry is missing, write whether you promote, hold, or roll back — and why hold is the default.
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