Replit Observability Skill

Replit Observability

Overview

Monitor Replit deployment health, track cold starts, measure resource usage, and set up alerting. Covers Replit's built-in monitoring, external health checking, structured logging, and integration with monitoring services.

Prerequisites

Replit app deployed (Autoscale or Reserved VM)
Health endpoint implemented (/health)
External monitoring service (UptimeRobot, Better Stack, or Prometheus)

Instructions

Step 1: Health Endpoint with Detailed Metrics

// src/routes/health.ts — comprehensive health check
import { Router } from 'express';
import { pool } from '../services/postgres';

const router = Router();
const startTime = Date.now();

router.get('/health', async (req, res) => {
  const checks: Record<string, any> = {
    status: 'ok',
    uptime: process.uptime(),
    bootTime: ((Date.now() - startTime) / 1000).toFixed(1) + 's ago',
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    repl: process.env.REPL_SLUG,
    region: process.env.REPLIT_DEPLOYMENT_REGION,
    env: process.env.NODE_ENV,
  };

  // Database check
  if (process.env.DATABASE_URL) {
    const dbStart = Date.now();
    try {
      await pool.query('SELECT 1');
      checks.database = {
        status: 'connected',
        latencyMs: Date.now() - dbStart,
        pool: { total: pool.totalCount, idle: pool.idleCount },
      };
    } catch (err: any) {
      checks.database = { status: 'disconnected', error: err.message };
      checks.status = 'degraded';
    }
  }

  // Memory metrics
  const mem = process.memoryUsage();
  checks.memory = {
    heapMB: Math.round(mem.heapUsed / 1024 / 1024),
    totalMB: Math.round(mem.heapTotal / 1024 / 1024),
    rssMB: Math.round(mem.rss / 1024 / 1024),
    percent: ((mem.heapUsed / mem.heapTotal) * 100).toFixed(1),
  };

  // Node.js info
  checks.runtime = {
    node: process.version,
    platform: process.platform,
    pid: process.pid,
  };

  res.status(checks.status === 'ok' ? 200 : 503).json(checks);
});

// Lightweight ping for uptime monitors
router.get('/ping', (req, res) => res.send('pong'));

export default router;

Step 2: Structured Logging

// src/utils/logger.ts — structured JSON logging
const IS_PROD = process.env.NODE_ENV === 'production';

type LogLevel = 'debug' | 'info' | 'warn' | 'error';

function log(level: LogLevel, message: string, data?: Record<string, any>) {
  if (level === 'debug' && IS_PROD) return;

  const entry = {
    timestamp: new Date().toISOString(),
    level,
    message,
    repl: process.env.REPL_SLUG,
    ...data,
  };

  // JSON format for machine parsing, human-readable in dev
  if (IS_PROD) {
    console[level === 'error' ? 'error' : 'log'](JSON.stringify(entry));
  } else {
    console[level === 'error' ? 'error' : 'log'](
      `[${level.toUpperCase()}] ${message}`,
      data || ''
    );
  }
}

export const logger = {
  debug: (msg: string, data?: any) => log('debug', msg, data),
  info: (msg: string, data?: any) => log('info', msg, data),
  warn: (msg: string, data?: any) => log('warn', msg, data),
  error: (msg: string, data?: any) => log('error', msg, data),
};

// Request logging middleware
export function requestLogger(req: any, res: any, next: any) {
  const start = Date.now();
  res.on('finish', () => {
    logger.info('request', {
      method: req.method,
      path: req.path,
      status: res.statusCode,
      durationMs: Date.now() - start,
      userId: req.headers['x-replit-user-id'] || 'anonymous',
    });
  });
  next();
}

Step 3: External Uptime Monitoring

Set up external monitors to detect Autoscale cold starts and outages:

UptimeRobot (free tier: 50 monitors):
1. Create new monitor: HTTP(s)
2. URL: https://your-app.replit.app/ping
3. Interval: 5 minutes
4. Alert contacts: email, Slack webhook

Better Stack / Datadog / Grafana Cloud:
- Same setup, more features
- Track response time trends
- Detect cold start patterns
- Set up PagerDuty integration

Key metrics to monitor externally:
- Uptime percentage (target: 99.9%)
- Response time P95 (target: < 2s)
- Cold start frequency (Autoscale only)
- SSL certificate expiry

Step 4: Cold Start Detection

// Track cold starts for Autoscale deployments
const COLD_START_THRESHOLD_MS = 5000;
let firstRequestTime: number | null = null;

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  if (!firstRequestTime) {
    firstRequestTime = Date.now();
    const bootTime = process.uptime();
    if (bootTime < 30) { // Just started
      logger.info('cold_start_detected', {
        bootTimeMs: Math.round(bootTime * 1000),
        path: req.path,
      });
    }
  }
  next();
});

Step 5: Alerting Rules

// src/utils/alerts.ts — send alerts to Slack on issues
async function alertSlack(message: string, severity: 'info' | 'warning' | 'critical') {
  const webhookUrl = process.env.SLACK_WEBHOOK_URL;
  if (!webhookUrl) return;

  const emoji = { info: 'information_source', warning: 'warning', critical: 'rotating_light' };
  await fetch(webhookUrl, {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: { 'Content-Type': 'application/json' },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      text: `:${emoji[severity]}: [${severity.toUpperCase()}] ${process.env.REPL_SLUG}\n${message}`,
    }),
  });
}

// Monitor memory usage
setInterval(async () => {
  const mem = process.memoryUsage();
  const heapPercent = (mem.heapUsed / mem.heapTotal) * 100;

  if (heapPercent > 90) {
    await alertSlack(`Memory critical: ${heapPercent.toFixed(1)}% heap used`, 'critical');
  } else if (heapPercent > 75) {
    await alertSlack(`Memory warning: ${heapPercent.toFixed(1)}% heap used`, 'warning');
  }
}, 60000);

// Monitor error rate
let errorCount = 0;
let requestCount = 0;

app.use((req, res, next) => {
  requestCount++;
  res.on('finish', () => {
    if (res.statusCode >= 500) errorCount++;
  });
  next();
});

setInterval(async () => {
  if (requestCount > 0) {
    const errorRate = (errorCount / requestCount) * 100;
    if (errorRate > 5) {
      await alertSlack(`Error rate: ${errorRate.toFixed(1)}% (${errorCount}/${requestCount})`, 'critical');
    }
  }
  errorCount = 0;
  requestCount = 0;
}, 300000); // Check every 5 minutes

Step 6: Replit Dashboard Monitoring

Built-in monitoring in Replit:
1. Deployment Settings > Logs: real-time stdout/stderr
2. Deployment Settings > History: deploy timeline + rollbacks
3. Database pane > Settings: storage usage + connection info
4. Billing > Usage: compute, egress, and storage costs

Check deployment logs:
- Click on active deployment
- View real-time log stream
- Filter by error/warning
- Logs persist across container restarts

Error Handling

| Issue | Cause | Solution | |-------|-------|----------| | Cold starts undetected | No external monitor | Set up UptimeRobot or similar | | Deployment logs missing | Container restarted | Use external log aggregator | | Memory leak unnoticed | No memory monitoring | Add heap tracking + alerts | | DB pool exhaustion | Too many connections | Monitor pool.totalCount in health |

Resources

Next Steps

For incident response, see replit-incident-runbook.

Agent Skills: Replit Observability

Install this agent skill to your local

Skill Files