When ME and not audit-industrialisation

• ME when: audit targeted at this domain only
• audit-industrialisation instead if: global multi-domain audit - it orchestrates every audit (including ME) and produces a consolidated report

For a full project audit, use audit-industrialisation rather than invoking each skill separately.

Observability & Alerting Audit

Overview

Audit a project's observability maturity: structured logs, logging guidelines, contextual baggage, metrics, dashboards, distributed traces, latency tracking, pool saturation, transient-error detection, alerting, notifications, correlation, runbooks, threshold tuning and post-mortems. Covers the OB (Observability, 9 questions) and AL (Alerting, 6 questions) sections, i.e. 15 questions across 4 thematic grids. Produces a maturity score (0-4) per question.

Score calculation

• Each scored question receives a level from 0 to 4.
• Questions marked N/A are excluded from the calculation.
• Overall score = sum of levels / number of scored questions (excluding N/A).
• Formula: score = Σ(levels) / count(scored questions)
• Example: 10 scored questions out of 15, sum = 25 → score = 25/10 = 2.5/4

Audit protocol

1. Detect the project type: backend, frontend SPA/PWA, fullstack, library. Use the client-side variant if applicable.
2. Detect the observability stack: look for OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Datadog, Sentry configs
3. Analyze the logging configuration: framework, format, levels, correlation, guidelines
4. Check contextual baggage: context propagation, automatic enrichment
5. Check instrumentation: RED/USE metrics exposed, tracing configured
6. Look for dashboards: Grafana configs, links in the docs, hierarchical structure
7. Analyze latency tracking: baseline, drift detection, predictive alerts
8. Check pools: configurations, metrics, saturation alerts
9. Examine transient-error detection: classification, baseline, anomalies
10. Examine the alert catalog: classification, owner, runbook, severity
11. Check notifications: channels, routing, escalation, failover
12. Analyze correlation/deduplication: grouping, inhibition, noise ratio
13. Check runbooks: content, links, diagnostic scripts
14. Analyze threshold tuning: regular review, metrics, adaptive thresholds
15. Examine post-mortems: template, culture, action tracking, recurrence
16. Check dependencies: observability packages installed
17. Run the verification commands for each question (see per-section grids)
18. Assign a level per question with justification and confidence level
19. Mark N/A the questions not applicable to the project type
20. Produce the report

Per-section grids

Each grid contains the statement, criticality, the elements to analyze/check, the bash commands and the level tables 0-4 (with a client-side variant where relevant).

• reference/logging.md - Logs, guidelines, contextual baggage · 3 questions (ob-01 to ob-03)
• reference/metriques.md - RED/USE, latency, pool saturation, transient errors · 4 questions (ob-04, ob-07, ob-08, ob-09)
• reference/traces-dashboards.md - Real-time dashboards, distributed traces · 2 questions (ob-05, ob-06)
• reference/alerting.md - Catalog, notifications, correlation, runbooks, thresholds, post-mortems · 6 questions (al-01 to al-06)

Variants by project type

Output format

## Observability & Alerting - Overall score: X.X/4 (Y questions scored out of 15)

### Summary
[2-3 sentences summarizing observability maturity]
[Detected project type: backend / frontend SPA/PWA / fullstack / library]

### Detail per question

| Code | Question | Criticality | Level | Confidence | Justification |
|------|----------|-----------|--------|-----------|---------------|
| ob-01 | Correlated structured logs | MUST | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-02 | Logging guideline and message structure | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-03 | Analysis and implementation of useful baggage | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-04 | RED/USE metrics | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-05 | Real-time dashboards | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-06 | Distributed traces (OTel, Elastic APM) | COULD | X or N/A | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-07 | Latency drift tracking | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-08 | Pool saturation (thread, DB, API) | COULD | X or N/A | high/medium/low | ... |
| ob-09 | Abnormal transient-error detection | SHOULD | X or N/A | high/medium/low | ... |
| al-01 | Alert catalog (critical, warning, info) | MUST | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| al-02 | Multi-channel notifications | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| al-03 | Correlation/deduplication (alert fatigue) | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| al-04 | Investigation runbook | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| al-05 | Alert threshold tuning | SHOULD | X | high/medium/low | ... |
| al-06 | Post-mortem template + recurring incidents | SHOULD | X or N/A | high/medium/low | ... |

### Strengths
- ...

### Weaknesses
- ...

### Recommendations
1. [MUST] ...
2. [SHOULD] ...
3. [COULD] ...

### Non-auditable items
- [List of items impossible to verify through static code analysis]
- Examples: SaaS-side Sentry configuration, alerting rules in PagerDuty, hosted Grafana dashboards, SLOs defined outside the repo, post-mortem process, notification tests

Exit condition

The audit is complete when:

• Project type detected (backend / frontend / fullstack / library / CLI), variant chosen
• All 15 questions have received a level 0-4 or been marked N/A with justification
• Verification commands run for each scored question
• Confidence level (high/medium/low) assigned per question
• Overall score computed excluding N/A
• Strengths, weaknesses and prioritized recommendations (MUST/SHOULD/COULD) filled in
• Non-auditable items listed explicitly