---
name: monitoring-observability
description: "Production monitoring & observability stack — structured logging, Prometheus/PromQL, Grafana-as-code, OpenTelemetry tracing, tail sampling, SLOs/error budgets, incident response. Use when instrumenting a service, designing metrics/alerts/SLOs, debugging an incident, wiring traces-to-logs, or choosing Datadog vs self-hosted."
---
# Monitoring & Observability

## Reference guide

Read only the references needed for the current request:

- **The Three Pillars — And How They Connect**: [references/the-three-pillars-and-how-they-connect.md](references/the-three-pillars-and-how-they-connect.md)
- **Structured Logging That Actually Helps**: [references/structured-logging-that-actually-helps.md](references/structured-logging-that-actually-helps.md)
- **Prometheus: PromQL Deep Dive**: [references/prometheus-promql-deep-dive.md](references/prometheus-promql-deep-dive.md)
- **Grafana: Dashboard as Code**: [references/grafana-dashboard-as-code.md](references/grafana-dashboard-as-code.md)
- **OpenTelemetry: Auto-Instrumentation**: [references/opentelemetry-auto-instrumentation.md](references/opentelemetry-auto-instrumentation.md)
- **Distributed Tracing: Practical Patterns**: [references/distributed-tracing-practical-patterns.md](references/distributed-tracing-practical-patterns.md)
- **SLOs, SLIs, and Error Budgets**: [references/slos-slis-and-error-budgets.md](references/slos-slis-and-error-budgets.md)
- **On-Call and Incident Response**: [references/on-call-and-incident-response.md](references/on-call-and-incident-response.md)
- **Severity: Critical**: [references/severity-critical.md](references/severity-critical.md)
- **Symptoms**: [references/symptoms.md](references/symptoms.md)
- **First Response (< 5 minutes)**: [references/first-response-5-minutes.md](references/first-response-5-minutes.md)
- **Diagnosis**: [references/diagnosis.md](references/diagnosis.md)
- **Mitigation**: [references/mitigation.md](references/mitigation.md)
- **Escalation**: [references/escalation.md](references/escalation.md)
- **Timeline**: [references/timeline.md](references/timeline.md)
- **Root Cause**: [references/root-cause.md](references/root-cause.md)
- **What Went Well**: [references/what-went-well.md](references/what-went-well.md)
- **What Went Wrong**: [references/what-went-wrong.md](references/what-went-wrong.md)
- **Action Items**: [references/action-items.md](references/action-items.md)
- **Lessons Learned**: [references/lessons-learned.md](references/lessons-learned.md)
- **Datadog vs Self-Hosted: Decision Matrix**: [references/datadog-vs-self-hosted-decision-matrix.md](references/datadog-vs-self-hosted-decision-matrix.md)
- **Quick Reference: Essential Queries**: [references/quick-reference-essential-queries.md](references/quick-reference-essential-queries.md)
- **Checklist: Production Observability**: [references/checklist-production-observability.md](references/checklist-production-observability.md)