AWS Observability
Overview
Domain expertise for AWS observability across metrics, logs, and traces. Covers CloudWatch platform capabilities (alarms, dashboards, Log Insights, custom metrics, EMF), X-Ray trace analysis, CloudTrail operational auditing, and ADOT collector configuration.
Works best with the AWS MCP server — enables running CLI commands, querying CloudWatch, and validating configurations directly. All guidance also works with standard AWS CLI access.
Note: Reference files contain specific runtime versions, quota values, and feature matrices that may change. When precision matters (e.g., deploying to production, choosing a runtime, or checking a quota), confirm values against current AWS documentation rather than relying solely on the values in these files.
Routing
| User need | Action | |-----------|--------| | Writing Log Insights queries | Read log-insights.md | | Configuring alarms (metric, composite, anomaly) | Read alarms.md | | Publishing custom metrics or using EMF | Read metrics.md | | Setting up X-Ray tracing or ADOT | Read tracing.md | | Building dashboards | Read dashboards.md | | Debugging observability issues | Read troubleshooting.md — starts with the 5 most common fixes | | Debugging canary failures | Read synthetics.md — see Common failures table | | CloudTrail operational auditing | Read cloudtrail.md | | Setting up Lambda monitoring with CDK | Use alarm-template.ts as a starting point | | Creating synthetic canaries | Read synthetics.md | | Configuring ADOT collector | Use otel-config.yaml as a starting point | | Spans multiple areas | Read the most specific reference first, then consult others as needed |
Files
| File | Content | |------|---------| | alarms.md | Metric, composite, anomaly detection alarms — configuration, constraints, recommended defaults | | log-insights.md | Complete query syntax, commands, functions, known issues, reusable query library | | metrics.md | Custom metrics, EMF spec, metric filters, high-resolution, retention | | tracing.md | X-Ray → ADOT migration, sampling rules, annotations vs metadata, collector config | | dashboards.md | Widget types, cross-account/region, dynamic labels, sharing | | troubleshooting.md | Error → cause → fix for all observability services | | cloudtrail.md | Operational auditing, event types, S3+Athena queries | | synthetics.md | Canary runtime/blueprint constraints, VPC networking, common failures | | alarm-template.ts | Best-practice CDK Lambda monitoring (alarms + dashboard) | | otel-config.yaml | ADOT collector config for X-Ray traces + CloudWatch EMF metrics |