GuideObservability
Why a Prometheus error-rate query can return no data
Zero errors, no traffic and absent series produce different PromQL results. Synthetic tests show how ratios, fallback zeros and absence checks behave for a checkout service.
Guides
Walkthroughs for observability, incident response and AI-assisted operations.
Browse guides with article filtersAIOps fundamentals
Start with what AI can do for operations, and where judgment still matters.
Read AIOps fundamentalsObservability for SRE
Make metrics, logs and traces work together.
Read Observability for SREIncident management with AI
Build an incident response practice that learns.
Read Incident management with AIPractical articles
Instructions, examples and implementation notes.
GuidePlatform engineering
Disruption budgets and the capacity left behind
Plan an inference-service node drain with a scoped disruption budget, replacement-capacity checks and a practical maintenance worksheet.
GuideAI in production
Prompt caching: measure the cost of useful work
What prompt-cache hits save once retries and failed work are included in task cost, with a local calculator and ledger.
GuideAI in production
How to evaluate incident-response agents
Build repeatable cases and check recovery independently, with a runnable Python grader.
GuideAI in production
Supervising coding agents with Herdr
How Herdr keeps coding sessions available while you detach, and what changes when its server restarts.
GuideIncident response
What did the postmortem fix prove?
Separate a completed task from evidence that the underlying risk was reduced.
GuideIncident response
Why a 5 Whys investigation can branch
Evidence can split a 5 Whys investigation into several contributing causes. A concurrency example shows how to turn those explanations into useful tests.
GuideAI in production
Comparing incident sources with NotebookLM
Conflicting restart instructions show where a source-backed notebook helps: finding the relevant passages, dates and exceptions for the runbook owner.
GuideAI in production
Evaluating Claude Opus 4.6 for incident work
A rollback exception tests whether Opus 4.6 preserves decisive evidence across a long session, and whether the resulting answer arrives in time to help.
GuideAI in production
Recovering an interrupted agent skill
A timed-out scaling request needs a durable record and destination-state checks. Reusable operational skills need to recover unfinished work as well as start it.
The on-call work that page counts leave out
Disturbed nights, specialist help and cleanup consume capacity beyond the primary shift. A workload worksheet connects that demand to staffing and delivery plans.
GuideSLOs & reliability
Release gates that hold up under incident pressure
An error-budget hold needs a route for an urgent repair. Fresh measurements, artifact-specific exceptions and recovery criteria determine how that route works.