Cargo Observability

Cargo CLI — Observability

Alerts. An alert is a scheduled threshold check. On every cron tick it measures a scope (what to watch), compares the measured value against a threshold (the breach condition), and on breach fires actions — each as its own run — and records an event. This is the proactive counterpart to cargo-diagnostics: diagnostics explains a failure after you notice it; an alert tells you the moment a metric crosses a line.

Everything lives under one CLI domain:

cargo-ai observability alert   …   # the alert CRUD + preview surface
cargo-ai observability event   …   # an alert's firing history

The three moving parts of every alert

| Part | Flag | What it is | | --- | --- | --- | | Scope | --scope | What to measure — one of six sources: spans, runs, records, orchestrationQuery, storageQuery, model. | | Threshold | --threshold | When it breaches — a metric + operator (gte/lte) + value. The metric menu depends on the scope. | | Actions | --actions | What happens on breach — an Action[] (connector / tool / agent / native nodes), each fired as its own run. Optional; omit for a silent alert whose breaches you read from its events. |

The scope and threshold are a matched pair — a metric can only be computed over the scopes that produce it (e.g. errorRate needs telemetry, freshness needs a model). The full compatibility matrix, every metric's meaning and units, and every scope filter field are in [references/scopes-and-thresholds.md](references/scopes-and-thresholds.md) — read it before writing a --scope/--threshold pair you haven't used before.

The golden rule: preview before you create

alert preview evaluates a scope + threshold right now, without firing actions or writing an event. It returns the value the alert would measure and whether that value breaches — so you calibrate the threshold against reality instead of guessing, and you confirm the scope/threshold pairing is even valid before committing it to a schedule.

cargo-ai observability alert preview \
  --scope '{"kind":"runs","workflowUuid":"","statuses":["error"]}' \
  --threshold '{"metric":"errorRate","operator":"gte","value":10}' \
  --window-minutes 1440          # last 24h; default 60

• outcome: "computed" → { value, total, failed, isBreached }. Set your threshold from value.
• outcome: "empty" → the window had nothing to measure (see the empty-vs-zero rule in references/alert-lifecycle.md).
• outcome: "notComputed" → { errorMessage }. A bad SQL query, a deleted model, or an invalid scope/threshold pairing all land here — fix it before creating.

--window-minutes only shapes the window for telemetry scopes (spans/runs/records). A model is measured as it stands right now; a query scope windows itself in its SQL.

Always preview first. It is free, it is the only way to size a threshold correctly, and it catches an invalid pairing before it becomes a schedule that writes an error event every tick.

Commands

All commands output JSON. Reads need a token with observability:read; create/update/remove need observability:write (an admin token has both; a plain member token may not — see Prerequisites).

Create an alert

cargo-ai observability alert create \
  --name "CRM sync error rate" \
  --description "Page when the HubSpot sync starts failing" \
  --cron "*/30 * * * *" \
  --scope '{"kind":"runs","workflowUuid":"","statuses":["error"]}' \
  --threshold '{"metric":"errorRate","operator":"gte","value":10}' \
  --actions '[{"kind":"agent","agentUuid":"","config":{"message":"{{alert.name}} breached: {{event.value}}% errors. {{alert.url}}"}}]'

• --cron — 5-field cron or @every (e.g. @every 30m), always UTC, at most once a minute. The UI presets bottom out at 30 minutes; go tighter only with reason (every tick scans ClickHouse and can fire paid runs).
• --disabled — create it paused (evaluate nothing until you update --enabled true).
• --folder — file it under a folder (from cargo-workspace-management).
• --actions — optional. Omit for a silent alert. The config is templated against the firing context ({{alert.*}}, {{event.*}}) — see [references/alert-lifecycle.md](references/alert-lifecycle.md) for the full variable list. Each action's target (agentUuid/toolUuid/connectorUuid) is validated to exist in the workspace at create time.

List, get, update, remove

cargo-ai observability alert list                      # all alerts, each with its lastEvent
cargo-ai observability alert get                 # one alert + its lastEvent

cargo-ai observability alert update --uuid  \
  --enabled false                                      # pause it (true/false — must be literal)
cargo-ai observability alert update --uuid  \
  --threshold '{"metric":"errorRate","operator":"gte","value":20}'   # raise the bar
cargo-ai observability alert update --uuid  \
  --description none                                    # "none" clears; --folder none unfiles

cargo-ai observability alert remove 

--enabled is strict: only the literal true or false are accepted — --enabled yes is rejected rather than silently disabling the alert. On update, any flag you omit is left unchanged; --description none / --folder none are the explicit "clear it" spellings.

Inspect firing history

cargo-ai observability event list           # latest evaluation events, newest first

Each event carries status (healthy / unhealthy / error), the measured value, a snapshot of the scope/threshold/actions as they were when it fired (the alert can change afterwards), runUuids (the runs the actions spawned — feed these to cargo-diagnostics or orchestration run get), the evaluation window, and errorMessage for error events. unhealthy = breached and fired; error = the metric could not be computed.

How evaluation actually works

The lifecycle — cron windows and the ClickHouse indexing lag, the at-most-once firing guarantee (an alert never re-fires on the same rows; a sustained breach is re-detected on the next tick), the empty-window-vs-real-zero rule that makes lte a dead-man's switch, and the full {{alert.*}}/{{event.*}} templating context — is documented in [references/alert-lifecycle.md](references/alert-lifecycle.md). Read it before you rely on an alert for anything time-sensitive.

Worked recipes

[references/examples/recipes.md](references/examples/recipes.md) — copy-paste starting points: error-rate pager, credit-budget guard, p95-latency watch, a dead-man's switch (count lte 0 — alert when a workflow stops running), model freshness / empty-model alerts, and a custom SQL-query alert.

Declarative alternative: defineAlert (CDK)

This skill is the imperative surface — one-off cargo-ai observability alert … calls. To manage an alert as code (in git, reproducible, deployed alongside the workflow it watches), use CDK's defineAlert builder instead — see [../cargo-cdk/SKILL.md](../cargo-cdk/SKILL.md) and "Declarative vs imperative" in the router. Same scope/threshold/action model; different authoring mode.

Cost discipline

An alert's actions fire as real runs — if an action calls a paid connector action or an agent, every breach re-bills. A poorly-sized threshold on a tight cron can breach (and bill) every tick. Two safeguards:

• Preview to size the threshold so it fires on genuine anomalies, not normal variance.
• If an action node calls a credits-based provider action, treat it like any scheduled paid workflow: read that provider's playbook (esp. its Recurring use section) in ../cargo-gtm/provider-playbooks/, and apply the spend rules in [../cargo-gtm/references/cost-discipline.md](../cargo-gtm/references/cost-discipline.md). Prefer cheap notification actions (an agent that posts to Slack, a connector notification) over anything that fans out.

Prerequisites

See [../cargo/references/prerequisites.md](../cargo/references/prerequisites.md) for install, login (--oauth / --token), JSON conventions, and error shapes. Verify with cargo-ai whoami first.

Alerts are guarded by observability:read / observability:write permissions. If a create/update/remove returns a permission error, the token lacks observability:write — use an admin token or have one granted (cargo-workspace-management).

When the CLI surprises you

If a documented flag, scope field, or response shape doesn't match what you observe (a fix may have shipped, or the docs may have drifted), re-refresh the CLI and skills; if it still doesn't add up, file a report — it's read by the team:

cargo-ai workspaceManagement report create \
  --title "" \
  --description ""

Presenting results

Follow [../cargo/references/interaction.md](../cargo/references/interaction.md): lead with the outcome ("alert created, will page the on-call agent when the CRM sync's error rate hits 10% over 30 min"), summarize an alert or its events as a compact table, never dump raw alert get / event list JSON into the conversation.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: getcargohq
• Source: getcargohq/cargo-skills
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://getcargo.ai

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.