observability
Expose evidence that helps explain a system’s behavior.
Use this when Failures cannot be traced from a user action to the operation that caused them.
without the term
“Something fails in production sometimes and I have no idea where. Can you add logging or whatever we need so I can follow one user's request through the system and see where it broke?”
with the term · How do you ask a model for observability?
Add observability for this failing workflow. Correlate the request and downstream work, measure failures, and verify that logs omit secrets.
What is observability?
Logs record events, metrics count and time them, and traces follow one request across services. Together they let you explain a failure without adding code after the fact.
Why does observability matter when vibe coding?
Unstructured print statements may omit identity, timing, or the actual failing boundary.
How do you do observability?
Choose a concrete diagnostic question and instrument only the evidence needed to answer it.
What goes wrong with observability?
Collecting full sensitive payloads instead of the diagnostic fields needed.