observability-designer

SLO/SLI design, alert optimization, and dashboard generation for production services. TRIGGER when: user asks to define SLOs, design alerts, create dashboards, reduce alert fatigue, set error budgets, or improve observability; user runs /observability or /slo. DO NOT TRIGGER when: debugging a specific incident (use debugging tools), writing application code, configuring CI/CD pipelines.

Observability Designer Skill

Design production observability from first principles: define what to measure, set targets, build alerts that do not page unnecessarily, and create dashboards that answer questions at a glance.

Workflow

  1. Define SLIs -- Identify the indicators that reflect user experience. See slo-framework.md.
  2. Set SLO targets -- Choose realistic targets based on business requirements and historical data.
  3. Design alerts -- Build burn-rate alerts that catch real problems without fatigue. See alert-design.md.
  4. Create dashboards -- Organize metrics into role-appropriate views. See dashboard-design.md.
  5. Iterate -- Review error budget consumption monthly. Adjust targets and alert thresholds based on operational data.

Core Principle

Observe from the user's perspective inward:

User request -> Load balancer -> API gateway -> Service -> Database
     ^                                                        |
     |_____________ This is what you measure first ___________|

Start with the outermost boundary (what the user experiences), then add internal signals only where they help diagnose problems faster.

Output Format

Service: payment-api
SLIs: availability (success rate), latency (P99), throughput
SLO: 99.9% availability over 30-day rolling window
Error budget: 43.2 minutes/month
Alert: burn rate >14.4x over 1h AND >6x over 6h -> page
Dashboard: 4 panels (availability, latency distribution, error rate, saturation)

What You Get

  • SLI/SLO definitions with error budgets tailored to business requirements and historical performance data.
  • Burn-rate alert configurations designed to minimize false positives and pager fatigue.
  • Dashboard layouts organized by role (on-call, product, executive) with actionable panels for availability, latency, and saturation.

Sub-files

FileContent
slo-framework.mdSLI definitions, SLO targets, error budgets
alert-design.mdSeverity, burn rate, fatigue prevention
dashboard-design.mdLayout, personas, cost optimization