Agent skill

Observability Testing Patterns

by proffesor-for-testing in proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe

Observability and monitoring validation patterns for dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, APM traces, and SLA/SLO verification.

MITAuto-check passedDevOps & Cloud

Install Observability Testing Patterns

skills CLI
$ npx skills add proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe --skill observability-testing-patterns -a claude-code

Project install by default; add -g for ~/.claude/skills/.

GitHub CLI
$ gh skill install proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe observability-testing-patterns --agent claude-code

Project scope by default; add --scope user for a personal install. Needs GitHub CLI 2.90.0 or later (public preview).

Manual copy
$ git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe.git skills-src && mkdir -p .claude/skills && cp -r skills-src/assets/skills/observability-testing-patterns .claude/skills/observability-testing-patterns && rm -rf skills-src

Use ~/.claude/skills/ instead of .claude/skills for a personal install. The folder must contain SKILL.md.

Claude Code skills documentation · loads skills from .claude/skills/

Facts

Skill name
observability-testing-patterns
GitHub stars
494
Token cost
~8.3k tokens
SKILL.md length
693 words
Files
4 (incl. scripts)
Skills in repo
111
Repo updated
First seen
Licence
MIT

At a glance

Observability and monitoring validation patterns for dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, APM traces, and SLA/SLO verification.

  • Works in 7 steps: VALIDATE data accuracy (source data… → TEST alert rules fire correctly at… → VERIFY log aggregation completeness (no… → …
  • Testing monitoring infrastructure
  • SKILL.md covers Browser engine, Quick Reference Card, Dashboard Data Accuracy… and Elasticsearch Query Result…, plus 13 more sections
  • Calls node

What it does

Observability Testing Patterns is an agent skill from proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe. Observability and monitoring validation patterns for dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, APM traces, and SLA/SLO verification. Use when testing monitoring infrastructure, dashboard accuracy, alert rules, or metric pipelines.

Its SKILL.md is about 8.3k tokens, which your agent loads only when the skill is triggered. The skill folder holds 6 other files, including scripts (for example `evals/observability-testing-patterns.yaml`, `schemas/output.json` and `scripts/validate-config.json`).

It sits in DevOps & Cloud, covering Observability, Monitoring and alerting and Test strategy. It works with Elasticsearch. The repository describes itself as: Agentic QE Fleet is an open-source AI-powered QA/QE platform designed for use with Coding Agents (works best with Claude Code) featuring specialized agents and skills to support… The licence is MIT.

When your agent uses it

  • Testing monitoring infrastructure
  • Dashboard accuracy
  • Metric pipelines

Example prompts

  • “/observability-testing-patterns”

Workflow steps

7 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

  1. VALIDATE data accuracy (source data matches what the dashboard displays)
  2. TEST alert rules fire correctly at defined thresholds
  3. VERIFY log aggregation completeness (no missing logs across services)
  4. TRACE distributed requests end-to-end through APM
  5. MEASURE dashboard performance (render time, query latency)
  6. CONFIRM SLA/SLO compliance through synthetic monitoring
  7. TEST metric pipeline integrity from collection to display

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 829d030. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

  • Tool permissions

    Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

    From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

  • Runs code

    Ships 1 file in scripts/, which the agent can run.

    Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

    • node

    From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

  • Network

    No URLs in SKILL.md.

    From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

  • Credentials

    Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

    From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Observability Testing Patterns loads about 8.3k tokens when it runs. Until then it costs about 65 tokens; SKILL.md has 693 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it
~65
When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches
~8.3k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Auto-check passed

The automated check found no risky patterns in SKILL.md.

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); the scripts in this folder are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe at commit 829d030, republished under its MIT licence (© proffesor-for-testing). 693 words, ~8,318 tokens.

Download SKILL.mdSave it as .claude/skills/observability-testing-patterns/SKILL.md (or your agent's skills folder). This skill also uses 3 other files; get the full folder from GitHub.
name
observability-testing-patterns
description
Observability and monitoring validation patterns for dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, APM traces, and SLA/SLO verification. Use when testing monitoring infrastructure, dashboard accuracy, alert rules, or metric pipelines.
category
specialized-testing
priority
high
tokenEstimate
1600
agents
qe-integration-tester, qe-performance-tester, qe-visual-tester
implementation_status
optimized
optimization_version
1
last_optimized
2026-02-04
dependencies
api-testing-patterns, shift-right-testing
quick_reference_card
true
tags
observability, monitoring, kibana, elasticsearch, dashboards, alerting, metrics, logging

Observability Testing Patterns

Browser engine

Dashboard screenshot validation and alert-UI verification go through the qe-browser fleet skill (.claude/skills/qe-browser/). Vibium is installed by aqe init. Typical dashboard regression workflow:

bash
vibium go "$GRAFANA_URL/d/api-latency"
vibium wait load
node .claude/skills/qe-browser/scripts/assert.js --checks '[
  {"kind": "selector_visible", "selector": ".panel-title"},
  {"kind": "no_console_errors"},
  {"kind": "no_failed_requests"},
  {"kind": "element_count", "selector": ".panel", "op": ">=", "count": 4}
]'
node .claude/skills/qe-browser/scripts/visual-diff.js --name "grafana-api-latency"

<default_to_action> When testing observability infrastructure, dashboards, or monitoring:

  1. VALIDATE data accuracy (source data matches what the dashboard displays)
  2. TEST alert rules fire correctly at defined thresholds
  3. VERIFY log aggregation completeness (no missing logs across services)
  4. TRACE distributed requests end-to-end through APM
  5. MEASURE dashboard performance (render time, query latency)
  6. CONFIRM SLA/SLO compliance through synthetic monitoring
  7. TEST metric pipeline integrity from collection to display

Quick Pattern Selection:

  • Dashboard shows wrong numbers -> Data accuracy validation
  • Alerts not firing -> Alert rule threshold testing
  • Missing logs in Kibana -> Log aggregation completeness
  • Slow dashboard -> Dashboard performance testing
  • Broken traces -> APM trace validation
  • SLA disputes -> SLO compliance validation

Critical Success Factors:

  • Observability is only as good as the data it shows
  • A dashboard that lies is worse than no dashboard
  • Alert fatigue kills response times; test thresholds carefully </default_to_action>

Quick Reference Card

When to Use
  • Validating dashboard data accuracy (Kibana, Grafana, Datadog)
  • Testing alert rule thresholds and notification delivery
  • Verifying log aggregation completeness across microservices
  • Validating distributed tracing (APM) correctness
  • Measuring SLA/SLO compliance
  • Testing metric pipeline integrity (collection -> aggregation -> display)
Testing Levels
LevelPurposeDependenciesSpeed
Query ValidationElasticsearch/PromQL query accuracyData sourceFast
Dashboard AccuracyVisual matches source dataFull stackMedium
Alert ThresholdTrigger and notification testingAlerting stackMedium
Pipeline IntegrityEnd-to-end metric flowFull pipelineSlower
PerformanceDashboard render time, query latencyFull stackSlower
Critical Test Scenarios
ScenarioMust TestExample
Data AccuracyDashboard = source truthOrder count on dashboard = DB count
Alert FiringThreshold triggers alertError rate > 5% fires PagerDuty
Alert RecoveryAuto-resolve when recoveredError rate drops below 5% clears alert
Log CompletenessAll services emit logs10 microservices, all logs in Kibana
Trace IntegrityFull request path visibleAuth -> API -> DB -> Cache spans
SLO ComplianceError budget tracking99.9% availability over 30 days
Time AccuracyTimestamps alignedLog timestamp matches event time
Tools
  • Dashboards: Kibana, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic
  • Search: Elasticsearch, OpenSearch, Loki
  • Metrics: Prometheus, InfluxDB, CloudWatch
  • Tracing: Jaeger, Zipkin, Datadog APM, OpenTelemetry
  • Alerting: PagerDuty, OpsGenie, Alertmanager
  • Synthetic: Datadog Synthetics, Checkly, Playwright
Agent Coordination
  • qe-integration-tester: Validate data pipelines, query accuracy, log completeness
  • qe-performance-tester: Dashboard render performance, query latency
  • qe-visual-tester: Dashboard visual regression, layout accuracy

Dashboard Data Accuracy Validation

Compare Source Data to Dashboard
javascript
describe('Dashboard Data Accuracy', () => {
  it('order count on dashboard matches database', async () => {
    // Step 1: Get ground truth from source database
    const dbResult = await db.query(
      "SELECT COUNT(*) as count FROM orders WHERE created_at >= NOW() - INTERVAL '24 HOURS'"
    );
    const dbCount = parseInt(dbResult.rows[0].count);

    // Step 2: Query Elasticsearch (same data source as dashboard)
    const esResult = await esClient.search({
      index: 'orders-*',
      body: {
        query: {
          range: { created_at: { gte: 'now-24h' } }
        },
        size: 0,
        track_total_hits: true
      }
    });
    const esCount = esResult.hits.total.value;

    // Step 3: Compare
    expect(esCount).toBe(dbCount);
  });

  it('revenue metric on dashboard matches transaction totals', async () => {
    const dbRevenue = await db.query(
      "SELECT SUM(total) as revenue FROM orders WHERE status = 'COMPLETED' AND created_at >= NOW() - INTERVAL '24 HOURS'"
    );
    const expectedRevenue = parseFloat(dbRevenue.rows[0].revenue);

    const esResult = await esClient.search({
      index: 'orders-*',
      body: {
        query: {
          bool: {
            must: [
              { term: { status: 'COMPLETED' } },
              { range: { created_at: { gte: 'now-24h' } } }
            ]
          }
        },
        aggs: {
          total_revenue: { sum: { field: 'total' } }
        },
        size: 0
      }
    });
    const dashboardRevenue = esResult.aggregations.total_revenue.value;

    // Allow small floating point tolerance
    expect(Math.abs(dashboardRevenue - expectedRevenue)).toBeLessThan(0.01);
  });

  it('error rate percentage is calculated correctly', async () => {
    const esResult = await esClient.search({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: {
        query: { range: { '@timestamp': { gte: 'now-1h' } } },
        aggs: {
          total: { value_count: { field: 'status_code' } },
          errors: {
            filter: { range: { status_code: { gte: 500 } } },
            aggs: { count: { value_count: { field: 'status_code' } } }
          }
        },
        size: 0
      }
    });

    const total = esResult.aggregations.total.value;
    const errors = esResult.aggregations.errors.count.value;
    const expectedErrorRate = (errors / total) * 100;

    // Fetch what the dashboard shows via Kibana API
    const dashboardPanel = await kibanaApi.get('/api/saved_objects/visualization/error-rate-gauge');
    const displayedErrorRate = await evaluateKibanaVisualization(dashboardPanel);

    expect(Math.abs(displayedErrorRate - expectedErrorRate)).toBeLessThan(0.1);
  });
});

Elasticsearch Query Result Validation

javascript
describe('Elasticsearch Query Validation', () => {
  it('validates date histogram aggregation returns correct buckets', async () => {
    // Insert known test data
    const testDocs = [];
    for (let hour = 0; hour < 24; hour++) {
      const timestamp = new Date();
      timestamp.setHours(hour, 0, 0, 0);
      testDocs.push({
        '@timestamp': timestamp.toISOString(),
        service: 'order-api',
        status_code: hour % 5 === 0 ? 500 : 200,
        response_time: 100 + (hour * 10)
      });
    }

    await esClient.bulk({
      index: 'test-logs',
      body: testDocs.flatMap(doc => [{ index: {} }, doc])
    });
    await esClient.indices.refresh({ index: 'test-logs' });

    // Run the same query the dashboard uses
    const result = await esClient.search({
      index: 'test-logs',
      body: {
        query: { match_all: {} },
        aggs: {
          requests_over_time: {
            date_histogram: { field: '@timestamp', fixed_interval: '1h' },
            aggs: {
              avg_response: { avg: { field: 'response_time' } },
              error_count: {
                filter: { range: { status_code: { gte: 500 } } }
              }
            }
          }
        },
        size: 0
      }
    });

    const buckets = result.aggregations.requests_over_time.buckets;
    expect(buckets.length).toBe(24);

    // Verify specific bucket values
    const errorBuckets = buckets.filter(b => b.error_count.doc_count > 0);
    expect(errorBuckets.length).toBe(5); // Hours 0, 5, 10, 15, 20
  });

  it('validates term aggregation for top services', async () => {
    const result = await esClient.search({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: {
        query: { range: { '@timestamp': { gte: 'now-1h' } } },
        aggs: {
          top_services: {
            terms: { field: 'service.keyword', size: 10 }
          }
        },
        size: 0
      }
    });

    const services = result.aggregations.top_services.buckets;
    expect(services.length).toBeGreaterThan(0);

    // Each bucket should have reasonable doc counts
    for (const bucket of services) {
      expect(bucket.key).toBeDefined();
      expect(bucket.doc_count).toBeGreaterThan(0);
    }
  });
});

Kibana Dashboard Element Assertions

javascript
describe('Kibana Dashboard Visual Validation', () => {
  it('validates dashboard panels render without errors', async () => {
    await page.goto(`${kibanaUrl}/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview`);

    // Wait for all panels to finish loading
    await page.waitForSelector('.embPanel__content', { state: 'visible' });
    await page.waitForFunction(() => {
      const loaders = document.querySelectorAll('.euiLoadingSpinner');
      return loaders.length === 0;
    }, { timeout: 30000 });

    // Check no error icons on any panel
    const errorPanels = await page.locator('.embPanel--error').count();
    expect(errorPanels).toBe(0);

    // Check no "No results found" where data is expected
    const noResultPanels = await page.locator('text="No results found"').count();
    expect(noResultPanels).toBe(0);
  });

  it('validates metric visualization shows correct value', async () => {
    await page.goto(`${kibanaUrl}/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview`);
    await page.waitForLoadState('networkidle');

    // Get the displayed metric value
    const metricValue = await page.locator('[data-test-subj="metricVis-total-orders"] .mtrVis__value').textContent();
    const displayedCount = parseInt(metricValue.replace(/,/g, ''));

    // Compare with direct ES query
    const esResult = await esClient.count({ index: 'orders-*' });

    expect(displayedCount).toBe(esResult.count);
  });

  it('validates table visualization columns and sorting', async () => {
    await page.goto(`${kibanaUrl}/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview`);
    await page.waitForLoadState('networkidle');

    // Verify expected columns exist
    const headers = await page.locator('.euiTable th').allTextContents();
    expect(headers).toContain('Service');
    expect(headers).toContain('Error Rate');
    expect(headers).toContain('P95 Latency');

    // Verify sorting works
    await page.click('th:has-text("Error Rate")');
    const firstRow = await page.locator('.euiTable tbody tr:first-child td').allTextContents();
    const secondRow = await page.locator('.euiTable tbody tr:nth-child(2) td').allTextContents();

    const firstErrorRate = parseFloat(firstRow[1]);
    const secondErrorRate = parseFloat(secondRow[1]);
    expect(firstErrorRate).toBeGreaterThanOrEqual(secondErrorRate);
  });
});

Alert Rule Testing

javascript
describe('Alert Rule Validation', () => {
  it('fires alert when error rate exceeds threshold', async () => {
    // Generate errors to exceed the 5% threshold
    const requests = [];
    for (let i = 0; i < 100; i++) {
      requests.push({
        '@timestamp': new Date().toISOString(),
        service: 'payment-api',
        status_code: i < 10 ? 500 : 200, // 10% error rate > 5% threshold
        response_time: 200
      });
    }

    await esClient.bulk({
      index: 'logs-payment',
      body: requests.flatMap(doc => [{ index: {} }, doc])
    });
    await esClient.indices.refresh({ index: 'logs-payment' });

    // Wait for alert evaluation cycle (typically 1 minute)
    await sleep(90000);

    // Check alert was fired
    const alerts = await alertManager.getActiveAlerts({
      filter: 'alertname="HighErrorRate" AND service="payment-api"'
    });
    expect(alerts.length).toBeGreaterThan(0);
    expect(alerts[0].labels.severity).toBe('critical');
  });

  it('alert auto-resolves when condition clears', async () => {
    // First trigger the alert
    await injectErrors('payment-api', { count: 50, total: 100 });
    await sleep(90000);

    let alerts = await alertManager.getActiveAlerts({ filter: 'alertname="HighErrorRate"' });
    expect(alerts.length).toBeGreaterThan(0);

    // Now inject healthy traffic to bring error rate below threshold
    await injectSuccessRequests('payment-api', { count: 1000 });
    await sleep(90000);

    // Alert should auto-resolve
    alerts = await alertManager.getActiveAlerts({ filter: 'alertname="HighErrorRate"' });
    expect(alerts.length).toBe(0);
  });

  it('alert notification reaches correct channel', async () => {
    // Subscribe to notification channel
    const notifications = [];
    const subscription = pagerDutyMock.onIncident((incident) => {
      notifications.push(incident);
    });

    // Trigger alert condition
    await injectErrors('critical-service', { count: 50, total: 100 });
    await sleep(120000);

    expect(notifications.length).toBeGreaterThan(0);
    expect(notifications[0].service.name).toBe('critical-service');
    expect(notifications[0].urgency).toBe('high');

    subscription.unsubscribe();
  });

  it('alert does not fire for brief transient spikes', async () => {
    // Inject a brief 30-second spike (alert requires 5 minutes sustained)
    await injectErrors('api-service', { count: 20, total: 50, duration: 30000 });
    await sleep(120000);

    const alerts = await alertManager.getActiveAlerts({ filter: 'alertname="HighErrorRate"' });
    expect(alerts.length).toBe(0); // Should NOT fire for transient spike
  });
});

Log Aggregation Completeness

javascript
describe('Log Aggregation Completeness', () => {
  it('all microservice logs appear in centralized index', async () => {
    const traceId = uuid();
    const services = ['api-gateway', 'auth-service', 'order-service', 'payment-service', 'notification-service'];

    // Generate a log entry with known traceId in each service
    for (const service of services) {
      await serviceLogEmitter.emit(service, {
        level: 'INFO',
        message: `Completeness test - ${traceId}`,
        traceId,
        timestamp: new Date().toISOString()
      });
    }

    // Wait for log pipeline to process (Filebeat -> Logstash -> Elasticsearch)
    await sleep(15000);

    // Query Elasticsearch for the trace ID
    const result = await esClient.search({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: {
        query: { term: { 'traceId.keyword': traceId } },
        size: 100
      }
    });

    const foundServices = result.hits.hits.map(h => h._source.service);

    // All services should have their log entry in Elasticsearch
    for (const service of services) {
      expect(foundServices).toContain(service);
    }
    expect(foundServices.length).toBe(services.length);
  });

  it('logs retain correct structure after pipeline processing', async () => {
    const testLog = {
      level: 'ERROR',
      message: 'Payment declined',
      traceId: uuid(),
      userId: 'user-123',
      orderId: 'order-456',
      errorCode: 'INSUFFICIENT_FUNDS',
      timestamp: new Date().toISOString()
    };

    await serviceLogEmitter.emit('payment-service', testLog);
    await sleep(10000);

    const result = await esClient.search({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: { query: { term: { 'traceId.keyword': testLog.traceId } } }
    });

    expect(result.hits.hits.length).toBe(1);
    const indexed = result.hits.hits[0]._source;

    // Verify all fields survived the pipeline
    expect(indexed.level).toBe('ERROR');
    expect(indexed.message).toBe('Payment declined');
    expect(indexed.userId).toBe('user-123');
    expect(indexed.orderId).toBe('order-456');
    expect(indexed.errorCode).toBe('INSUFFICIENT_FUNDS');
  });

  it('detects log volume drops indicating pipeline issues', async () => {
    // Get baseline log volume for the past hour
    const baseline = await esClient.count({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: { query: { range: { '@timestamp': { gte: 'now-2h', lt: 'now-1h' } } } }
    });

    const current = await esClient.count({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: { query: { range: { '@timestamp': { gte: 'now-1h' } } } }
    });

    // Current volume should be at least 50% of baseline (not a sudden drop)
    const ratio = current.count / baseline.count;
    expect(ratio).toBeGreaterThan(0.5);
  });
});

APM Trace Validation

javascript
describe('Distributed Trace Validation', () => {
  it('captures complete trace across all services', async () => {
    // Make a request that traverses multiple services
    const response = await httpClient.post('/api/orders', {
      customerId: 'CUST-TRACE',
      items: [{ sku: 'ITEM-1', qty: 1 }]
    });

    const traceId = response.headers['x-trace-id'];
    expect(traceId).toBeDefined();

    // Wait for trace to be indexed
    await sleep(10000);

    // Query Jaeger/APM for the trace
    const trace = await jaegerClient.getTrace(traceId);

    // Verify all expected spans exist
    const spanNames = trace.spans.map(s => s.operationName);
    expect(spanNames).toContain('POST /api/orders');
    expect(spanNames).toContain('auth.validateToken');
    expect(spanNames).toContain('order.create');
    expect(spanNames).toContain('payment.authorize');
    expect(spanNames).toContain('inventory.reserve');
    expect(spanNames).toContain('db.insert orders');

    // Verify parent-child relationships
    const apiSpan = trace.spans.find(s => s.operationName === 'POST /api/orders');
    const authSpan = trace.spans.find(s => s.operationName === 'auth.validateToken');
    expect(authSpan.references[0].refType).toBe('CHILD_OF');
    expect(authSpan.references[0].spanID).toBe(apiSpan.spanID);
  });

  it('traces capture error spans correctly', async () => {
    // Trigger a known error
    const response = await httpClient.post('/api/orders', {
      customerId: 'INVALID-CUSTOMER',
      items: [{ sku: 'ITEM-1', qty: 1 }]
    });

    const traceId = response.headers['x-trace-id'];
    await sleep(10000);

    const trace = await jaegerClient.getTrace(traceId);

    // Find error span
    const errorSpan = trace.spans.find(s => s.tags.some(t => t.key === 'error' && t.value === true));
    expect(errorSpan).toBeDefined();
    expect(errorSpan.logs).toContainEqual(
      expect.objectContaining({
        fields: expect.arrayContaining([
          expect.objectContaining({ key: 'error.message' })
        ])
      })
    );
  });

  it('validates trace sampling rate', async () => {
    const requestCount = 100;
    const traceIds = [];

    for (let i = 0; i < requestCount; i++) {
      const resp = await httpClient.get('/api/health');
      if (resp.headers['x-trace-id']) {
        traceIds.push(resp.headers['x-trace-id']);
      }
    }

    await sleep(15000);

    let tracesFound = 0;
    for (const traceId of traceIds) {
      try {
        await jaegerClient.getTrace(traceId);
        tracesFound++;
      } catch (e) {
        // Trace not sampled
      }
    }

    // With 10% sampling rate, expect roughly 10 traces (allow variance)
    const samplingRate = tracesFound / requestCount;
    expect(samplingRate).toBeGreaterThan(0.05);
    expect(samplingRate).toBeLessThan(0.20);
  });
});

Show full SKILL.md (276 more words)Show less

SLA/SLO Validation

javascript
describe('SLA/SLO Compliance Validation', () => {
  it('validates 99.9% availability SLO over 30 days', async () => {
    const result = await prometheusClient.query(
      'avg_over_time(up{job="api-service"}[30d])'
    );
    const availability = parseFloat(result.data.result[0].value[1]) * 100;

    expect(availability).toBeGreaterThanOrEqual(99.9);

    // Calculate error budget remaining
    const totalMinutes = 30 * 24 * 60;
    const allowedDowntime = totalMinutes * 0.001; // 43.2 minutes
    const actualDowntime = totalMinutes * (1 - availability / 100);
    const errorBudgetRemaining = ((allowedDowntime - actualDowntime) / allowedDowntime) * 100;

    expect(errorBudgetRemaining).toBeGreaterThan(0);
    console.log(`Error budget remaining: ${errorBudgetRemaining.toFixed(1)}%`);
  });

  it('validates P95 latency SLO', async () => {
    const result = await prometheusClient.query(
      'histogram_quantile(0.95, sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{service="api-service"}[24h])) by (le))'
    );
    const p95Latency = parseFloat(result.data.result[0].value[1]) * 1000; // Convert to ms

    expect(p95Latency).toBeLessThan(500); // SLO: P95 < 500ms
  });

  it('runs synthetic monitoring check for uptime', async () => {
    const endpoints = [
      { url: '/api/health', expectedStatus: 200, maxLatency: 200 },
      { url: '/api/orders', expectedStatus: 401, maxLatency: 300 }, // Auth required
      { url: '/api/products', expectedStatus: 200, maxLatency: 500 }
    ];

    const results = [];
    for (const endpoint of endpoints) {
      const start = Date.now();
      const response = await httpClient.get(endpoint.url);
      const latency = Date.now() - start;

      results.push({
        url: endpoint.url,
        status: response.status,
        latency,
        statusMatch: response.status === endpoint.expectedStatus,
        latencyOk: latency <= endpoint.maxLatency
      });
    }

    // All checks should pass
    for (const result of results) {
      expect(result.statusMatch).toBe(true);
      expect(result.latencyOk).toBe(true);
    }
  });
});

Metric Pipeline Integrity

javascript
describe('Metric Pipeline - Collection to Display', () => {
  it('validates custom metric flows from app to Prometheus to Grafana', async () => {
    // Step 1: Emit a known custom metric from application
    const metricName = 'test_orders_processed_total';
    const expectedValue = 42;
    await appMetrics.set(metricName, expectedValue, { service: 'test' });

    // Step 2: Wait for scrape interval (15s default)
    await sleep(20000);

    // Step 3: Query Prometheus directly
    const promResult = await prometheusClient.query(`${metricName}{service="test"}`);
    const promValue = parseFloat(promResult.data.result[0].value[1]);
    expect(promValue).toBe(expectedValue);

    // Step 4: Query Grafana datasource API (same as dashboard would)
    const grafanaResult = await grafanaApi.post('/api/ds/query', {
      queries: [{
        datasource: { type: 'prometheus' },
        expr: `${metricName}{service="test"}`,
        refId: 'A'
      }]
    });

    const grafanaValue = parseFloat(grafanaResult.body.results.A.frames[0].data.values[1][0]);
    expect(grafanaValue).toBe(expectedValue);
  });

  it('validates histogram metric percentile accuracy', async () => {
    // Generate known latency distribution
    const latencies = [10, 20, 30, 50, 100, 200, 300, 500, 1000, 2000]; // ms
    for (const latency of latencies) {
      await appMetrics.observe('http_request_duration_ms', latency, { endpoint: '/test' });
    }

    await sleep(20000);

    // Verify P50 and P99
    const p50 = await prometheusClient.query(
      'histogram_quantile(0.5, rate(http_request_duration_ms_bucket{endpoint="/test"}[5m]))'
    );
    const p99 = await prometheusClient.query(
      'histogram_quantile(0.99, rate(http_request_duration_ms_bucket{endpoint="/test"}[5m]))'
    );

    const p50Value = parseFloat(p50.data.result[0].value[1]);
    const p99Value = parseFloat(p99.data.result[0].value[1]);

    // P50 should be around 100ms (median of our distribution)
    expect(p50Value).toBeGreaterThan(50);
    expect(p50Value).toBeLessThan(300);

    // P99 should be around 2000ms
    expect(p99Value).toBeGreaterThan(1000);
  });
});

Dashboard Performance Testing

javascript
describe('Dashboard Performance', () => {
  it('dashboard loads within acceptable time', async () => {
    const start = Date.now();

    await page.goto(`${kibanaUrl}/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview`);

    // Wait for all panels to finish loading
    await page.waitForFunction(() => {
      const spinners = document.querySelectorAll('.euiLoadingSpinner');
      return spinners.length === 0;
    }, { timeout: 30000 });

    const loadTime = Date.now() - start;

    expect(loadTime).toBeLessThan(10000); // Dashboard should load in under 10s
  });

  it('dashboard handles large time range without timeout', async () => {
    // Set time range to 30 days
    await page.goto(`${kibanaUrl}/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview?_g=(time:(from:now-30d,to:now))`);

    // Should complete without timeout error
    await page.waitForFunction(() => {
      const errors = document.querySelectorAll('.embPanel--error');
      const spinners = document.querySelectorAll('.euiLoadingSpinner');
      return errors.length === 0 && spinners.length === 0;
    }, { timeout: 60000 });

    const errorPanels = await page.locator('.embPanel--error').count();
    expect(errorPanels).toBe(0);
  });

  it('Elasticsearch query performance is within bounds', async () => {
    const queries = [
      { name: 'date_histogram', body: { aggs: { over_time: { date_histogram: { field: '@timestamp', fixed_interval: '1h' } } }, size: 0 } },
      { name: 'terms_agg', body: { aggs: { top_services: { terms: { field: 'service.keyword', size: 20 } } }, size: 0 } },
      { name: 'percentiles', body: { aggs: { latency: { percentiles: { field: 'response_time', percents: [50, 90, 95, 99] } } }, size: 0 } }
    ];

    for (const query of queries) {
      const start = Date.now();
      await esClient.search({ index: 'logs-*', body: { query: { range: { '@timestamp': { gte: 'now-24h' } } }, ...query.body } });
      const elapsed = Date.now() - start;

      expect(elapsed).toBeLessThan(5000); // Each query under 5s
    }
  });
});

Time-Series Data Accuracy

javascript
describe('Time-Series Data Accuracy', () => {
  it('validates no data gaps in time-series metrics', async () => {
    const result = await prometheusClient.queryRange(
      'up{job="api-service"}',
      { start: 'now-24h', end: 'now', step: '5m' }
    );

    const values = result.data.result[0].values;
    const expectedPoints = (24 * 60) / 5; // 288 data points for 24h at 5m intervals

    // Allow up to 5% missing data points
    expect(values.length).toBeGreaterThan(expectedPoints * 0.95);

    // Check for gaps longer than 15 minutes (3 consecutive missing points)
    for (let i = 1; i < values.length; i++) {
      const gap = values[i][0] - values[i - 1][0]; // timestamp difference
      expect(gap).toBeLessThanOrEqual(900); // No gap > 15 minutes
    }
  });

  it('validates timestamp alignment across sources', async () => {
    // Generate event with precise timestamp
    const eventTime = new Date();
    const traceId = uuid();

    await httpClient.post('/api/test-event', { traceId });
    await sleep(15000);

    // Check timestamp in logs
    const logResult = await esClient.search({
      index: 'logs-*',
      body: { query: { term: { 'traceId.keyword': traceId } } }
    });
    const logTimestamp = new Date(logResult.hits.hits[0]._source['@timestamp']);

    // Check timestamp in metrics (approximate)
    // Timestamps should be within 5 seconds of each other
    const diff = Math.abs(logTimestamp.getTime() - eventTime.getTime());
    expect(diff).toBeLessThan(5000);
  });
});

Best Practices

Do This
  • Compare dashboard values against source-of-truth databases
  • Test alert thresholds with known data to verify exact firing conditions
  • Validate log completeness by injecting traceable test events
  • Test alert recovery (auto-resolve) not just alert firing
  • Monitor log volume as a proxy for pipeline health
  • Validate sampling rates for APM traces
  • Test dashboards at realistic time ranges (not just last 15 minutes)
Avoid This
  • Trusting dashboard numbers without source validation
  • Testing alerts only with manual threshold checks in the UI
  • Ignoring log pipeline latency (logs may take seconds to minutes to appear)
  • Skipping alert fatigue testing (too many false positives)
  • Assuming metrics are accurate without end-to-end pipeline validation
  • Testing only with small data volumes (performance issues appear at scale)
  • Forgetting to test alert notification delivery (PagerDuty, Slack, email)

Agent-Assisted Observability Testing

typescript
// Data accuracy validation
await Task("Dashboard Data Accuracy Validation", {
  dashboard: 'operations-overview',
  panels: ['order-count', 'revenue-total', 'error-rate'],
  sourceDatabase: 'orders-db',
  compareFields: ['count', 'sum(total)', 'error_percentage'],
  tolerance: 0.01
}, "qe-integration-tester");

// Dashboard performance testing
await Task("Dashboard Performance Benchmark", {
  dashboardUrl: 'http://kibana:5601/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview',
  timeRanges: ['15m', '1h', '24h', '7d', '30d'],
  maxLoadTime: 10000,
  maxQueryTime: 5000,
  captureScreenshots: true
}, "qe-performance-tester");

// Dashboard visual regression
await Task("Dashboard Visual Regression", {
  dashboardUrl: 'http://kibana:5601/app/dashboards#/view/operations-overview',
  baselineScreenshots: 'baseline/dashboards/',
  threshold: 0.05,
  ignoreRegions: ['timestamp-header', 'dynamic-counters']
}, "qe-visual-tester");

// Alert rule validation
await Task("Alert Rule Comprehensive Test", {
  alertRules: ['HighErrorRate', 'HighLatency', 'ServiceDown'],
  testFiring: true,
  testRecovery: true,
  testNotificationChannel: true,
  validateSilencing: true
}, "qe-integration-tester");

Agent Coordination Hints

Memory Namespace
aqe/observability-testing/
  dashboards/          - Dashboard test results and screenshots
  alerts/              - Alert rule test outcomes
  logs/                - Log completeness validation results
  traces/              - APM trace validation results
  slo/                 - SLA/SLO compliance metrics
  pipelines/           - Metric pipeline integrity checks
  performance/         - Dashboard and query performance benchmarks
Fleet Coordination
typescript
const observabilityFleet = await FleetManager.coordinate({
  strategy: 'observability-testing',
  agents: [
    'qe-integration-tester',  // Data accuracy, log completeness, alert rules
    'qe-performance-tester',  // Dashboard load time, query latency
    'qe-visual-tester'        // Dashboard visual regression
  ],
  topology: 'mesh'
});

await observabilityFleet.execute({
  targets: [
    { type: 'dashboard', id: 'operations-overview', checks: ['accuracy', 'performance', 'visual'] },
    { type: 'alerts', rules: ['HighErrorRate', 'HighLatency'], checks: ['fire', 'resolve', 'notify'] },
    { type: 'logs', services: ['api', 'auth', 'payment'], checks: ['completeness', 'structure'] },
    { type: 'traces', endpoints: ['/api/orders'], checks: ['spans', 'errors', 'sampling'] }
  ]
});


Remember

Observability testing is about proving that your monitoring tells the truth. A dashboard that shows green when the system is on fire is worse than no dashboard at all. Validate data accuracy by comparing against source databases, test alert thresholds with controlled data injection, and verify log completeness by tracing known events through the entire pipeline.

With Agents: Agents automate the tedious comparison of dashboard values against source databases, systematically test alert thresholds with synthetic load, and validate log pipeline completeness across all services. Use agents to continuously verify that your observability stack is trustworthy.

© proffesor-for-testing, MIT. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 3 other files (scripts) in assets/skills/observability-testing-patterns of proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe.

  • SKILL.md
  • evals/observability-testing-patterns.yaml
  • schemas/output.json
  • scripts/validate-config.json

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 829d030

Compare with similar skills

Observability Testing Patterns next to the 5 skills that share the most tags, products or categories with it. Stars are the repository's; “used in” counts other GitHub owners with a copy.

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Prometheus Error Rate Investigatorprometheus/prometheus-mcp117—~592Automated safety check: PassApache-2.0
Oma Observabilityfirst-fluke/oh-my-agent1.3k—~4.9kAutomated safety check: PassMIT

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Works with

Categories

Questions about Observability Testing Patterns

What does Observability Testing Patterns do?

Observability and monitoring validation patterns for dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, APM traces, and SLA/SLO verification. Observability Testing Patterns is an agent skill from proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe. Observability and monitoring validation patterns for dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, APM traces, and SLA/SLO verification.

When should I use Observability Testing Patterns?

Observability Testing Patterns fits situations like: testing monitoring infrastructure; dashboard accuracy; metric pipelines.

How do I install Observability Testing Patterns in Claude Code?

Run `npx skills add proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe --skill observability-testing-patterns -a claude-code`. Or copy the skill folder (assets/skills/observability-testing-patterns in proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe) into .claude/skills/observability-testing-patterns in your project. Claude Code loads it when a task matches its description.

How do I install Observability Testing Patterns in Codex?

Run `npx skills add proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe --skill observability-testing-patterns -a codex`. Or copy the skill folder (assets/skills/observability-testing-patterns in proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe) into .agents/skills/observability-testing-patterns in your project. Codex loads it when a task matches its description.

Can I use Observability Testing Patterns in Cursor, Gemini CLI or GitHub Copilot?

Cursor, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode also load SKILL.md folders. With the skills CLI, run `npx skills add proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe --skill observability-testing-patterns -a cursor` (or -a gemini-cli, github-copilot or opencode for the others). To copy it by hand, put the folder in .cursor/skills/observability-testing-patterns, .gemini/skills/observability-testing-patterns, .github/skills/observability-testing-patterns and .opencode/skills/observability-testing-patterns in your project.

What does Observability Testing Patterns need to run?

Going by SKILL.md and its folder, Observability Testing Patterns needs the command-line tools its instructions call (node).

Does Observability Testing Patterns access the network?

SKILL.md contains no URLs. Any network use would come from the scripts or tools the agent runs. This is read from the text; nothing was executed.

Is Observability Testing Patterns safe to install?

Our automated static check of SKILL.md found no risky patterns, such as piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files or hidden Unicode. It is not a guarantee. The check reads SKILL.md only: the scripts in the folder are not scanned, so read them before running anything.

What licence does Observability Testing Patterns use?

Observability Testing Patterns is published under the MIT licence (the repository's licence). It allows redistribution, so the full SKILL.md is shown on this page.

How many tokens does Observability Testing Patterns use?

About 8.3k tokens (SKILL.md is roughly 33k characters). Agents keep only the skill's name and description in context until a task matches; then they load SKILL.md in full.

What are the alternatives to Observability Testing Patterns?

Skills that share tags, products or a category with Observability Testing Patterns: Observability Sre Triage (elastic/agent-skills, 592 stars), Service Mesh Observability (wshobson/agents, 40k stars), Monitoring Observability (ahmedasmar/devops-claude-skills, 203 stars) and Prometheus Error Rate Investigator (prometheus/prometheus-mcp, 117 stars). The comparison table on this page puts their stars, adoption, token cost, safety result and licence side by side.

Who maintains Observability Testing Patterns?

proffesor-for-testing (a GitHub user) maintains it in proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe, which has 494 GitHub stars. The repository holds 111 skills in this directory. The repository was last updated on October 4, 2026.

Source: proffesor-for-testing/agentic-qe on GitHub. Facts on this page come from the repository at the commit we read; the author's words are quoted as theirs.