Ready to supercharge your AI agents?

Install any skill in seconds. Free to start, no credit card required.

Observability When To Add · avizmarlon | DecimalAI

devopsby avizmarlon

Observability When To Add

avizmarlon/observability-when-to-add

Source avizmarlon/agent-skills ↗License MIT

Instrumentation is directed, not preventive — add observability only when confirmed pain exists. Follow industry standards (OpenTelemetry, structured logging, performance.now()).

SkillScore100Maintained

Automatic

DevOps & SRE pack

Last verified 8/3/2026

What it changes

Passed 22 of 22 test cases with the skill, and 14 of 22 without it.

Without skill64%

With skill100%

Checks it passed that the model alone missed

Recommends against instrumenting internal CPU-bound functions
Recommends verb-first colon-separated naming such as query:database
Rejects dot-delimited hierarchical event names like user.account.created

and 10 more in the full report

8 fixed14 passed either way0 still failing0 broke

Pass-rate lift: +36 pp
Tokens: +13%
Agent turns: 0%
Response time: -23%

Model gemini-3.6-flashMeasured 8/3/2026v122 of 22 cases passed with skill

Tokens, turns and time describe resource use, not a dollar price.

Use this skill

Save it into your project's skills folder. Claude Code picks it up in its next session.

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add/SKILL.md

Want it pinned and updatable? pip install "decimalai>=0.15", then decimalai skills add avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add, and start Claude Code with claude --plugin-dir "$(git rev-parse --show-toplevel)/.agents"

1 · One-time — install the CLI (docs ↗)

pip install "decimalai>=0.15"

2 · Get the skill — writes .agents/skills/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add/ and pins it in .decimal/skills.lock

decimalai skills add avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add

No CLI? Get the same file — curl · raw file

curl -fsSL --create-dirs -o .claude/skills/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add/SKILL.md https://app.decimal.ai/s/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add/SKILL.md

Raw file: /s/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add/SKILL.md ↗ · machine-readable summary at /s/avizmarlon-observability-when-to-add.json ↗

Safety checks: 3 of 3 passed

Code scan CleanIntent PassedContent Clean

See it in action

One of 8 test cases the skill fixed. Same model, same prompt, with and without the skill.

1 of 8

Prompt

A developer working locally needs to measure execution time of a tricky algorithm inside a TypeScript function before submitting code. Should they integrate a distributed tracing SDK or use something temporary?

What was checked, without and with the skill
Checked	Without skill	With skill
Recommends language builtin utilities like console.time and console.timeEnd	Missed	Passed
Advises discarding the temporary timing code after resolving the issue	Passed	Passed

case-10 · gemini-3.6-flash · 8/3/2026 · answers are capped and redacted

What's inside

The instructions your model reads when the skill loads.

SKILL.md71 linessingle file

Observability & Instrumentation — Directed, Not Preventive

Industry principle (Google SRE Book, Honeycomb, Charity Majors): instrumentation carries maintenance cost proportional to its value. Every metric is code to maintain, schema that can break, storage cost, and signal to interpret. You instrument when you have confirmed pain, not "just in case."

When to add observability

Performance bug you cannot locate (classic in multi-threaded, async, or distributed systems)
External SLA or performance requirement demands metrics
System is in production with real user traffic
Flow analysis is part of the product itself (user journey tracking, etc.)

When NOT to add observability

"Good practice" or preventive coverage before pain is identified
Small side projects in active development
Before you have identified a concrete bottleneck or failure mode
To satisfy an abstract rule like "instrument everything"

What to use when you decide to instrument

Production / real traffic → OpenTelemetry (CNCF graduated project) + collector + backend (Honeycomb, Tempo, Jaeger, or cloud equivalent)
Local development / single-user → structured JSON logging + jq/grep. Add correlation_id if the call crosses process boundaries.
Spot performance hunt → use language builtins (console.time/console.timeEnd in JavaScript, time.perf_counter() in Python, etc.). Discard after resolving the issue.

Universal principles when instrumenting

Instrument boundaries, not internals

Entry points (API handlers, RPC endpoints)
Network calls (HTTP, gRPC, database queries)
External service boundaries
NOT every function, NOT every variable assignment

Aggressive sampling in production

Default: 1-10% of requests
100% only in development or for high-value (error) events
Sampling reduces noise and cost without losing signal on aggregate behavior

Telemetry failure must not cascade

All log writes go in try/catch blocks (silent failure okay)
If the observability system is down, the application runs normally

Track record

Benchmark

22 / 22

test cases passed, vs 14 / 22 without

Adoption

Users: 3
Times used: 65

Safety and source details

SkillSafety

✓ 3 of 3 passed

Code scan15 of 15 checks clean

0 critical · 0 warning · 0 info — scanner v4 — 8/1/2026

View 15 scanner checks

live_secretremote_code_executionreverse_shelldata_exfiltrationssrf_metadataagent_snoopinganti_refusaldestructive_commandsobfuscated_unicodeunicode_homoglyphopaque_blobsuspicious_urltool_overreachtrigger_abuseprompt_injection_phrasing

IntentSafe

LLM judge · does the skill do what it claims

ContentClean

LLM judge · policy & harmful-content review

Source

Imported

avizmarlon / agent-skills

skills/observability-when-to-add/SKILL.md

View on GitHub ↗

License MITImported 8/1/2026Version v1

Other skills for the same job

Published skills whose descriptions closely match this one, with their headline benchmark lift.

More skills from the same source and nearby in the registry, with their headline benchmark lift.