API Observability Planner Protocol

This skill ensures that when an API goes down, the team knows exactly why before the users even notice. It shifts telemetry from "just log the errors" to a structured observability pipeline.

Core assumption: If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Blind APIs cause prolonged outages.

1. The Three Pillars Strategy (Static)

Define exactly what your framework will emit:

• Logs (Events): Structured JSON logging. Never use raw text strings ("User 123 failed login" vs {"event": "login_failed", "user_id": 123, "reason": "bad_password"}).
• Metrics (Aggregations): Implement the RED Method:
  • Rate: Requests per second.
  • Errors: Failed request rate (4xx vs 5xx).
  • Duration: Latency percentiles (p50, p90, p99).
• Traces (Workflows): Distributed tracing (W3C Trace Context). Ensure trace_id and span_id propagate across microservices and database calls.

2. Health & Alerting Design