logging-best-practices
This skill is adpated from "Logging sucks. And here's how to make it better. by Boris Tane.
When helping with logging, observability, or debugging strategies, follow these principles:
Core Philosophy
- Logs are optimized for querying, not writing — always design with debugging in mind
- Context is everything — a log without correlation IDs is useless in distributed systems
- Logs are for humans during incidents, not just for compliance or "just in case"
- If you can't filter and search your logs effectively, they provide zero value
Structured Logging Requirements
- Always use key-value pairs (JSON) instead of string interpolation
- Bad: "Payment failed for user 123"
- Good: {"event": "payment_failed", "user_id": "123", "reason": "insufficient_funds", "amount": 99.99}
- Structured logs are machine-parseable, enabling aggregation, alerting, and dashboards
Required Fields for Every Log Event
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