Factory Observability

Factory observability

Each section leads with Principle (one sentence, stack-agnostic), then Why (constraint → option → tradeoff), then Recipe (the PostHog / Sentry / pino / structlog shape we use), and Failure mode when there's one to name.

Day-one stack — observability before features

Principle. PostHog + Sentry + trace IDs + structured logs go in on day one, before the first feature ships.

Why. Observability is the build's most asymmetric cost-vs-value: cheap on day one (an SDK install and a config block), expensive to backfill (every event needs a redeploy, session-replay data starts empty, six months of usage history is lost). The trap is treating it as "we'll add when we need it" — by the time you need it, the data you'd want doesn't exist.

Recipe.

| Layer | Tool | Purpose | |---|---|---| | Product analytics | PostHog | Per-feature usage, funnels, session replay | | Error tracking | Sentry | Exceptions, performance, source maps | | Audit log | DB table (admin_actions or audit_log) | Mutation provenance, regulatory compliance | | Request tracing | Trace ID middleware + logs | Cross-service debugging | | Structured logs | pino (Node) / structlog (Python) | Searchable, machine-parseable |

PostHog — client setup with ingest rewrite

Principle. PostHog ingest goes through your own domain via Next.js rewrites; ad-blockers drop direct PostHog calls.

Why. Browser-level ad-blockers (uBlock, Brave's shield) recognize i.posthog.com and drop ~30% of events in aggregate. Routing through /ingest on your own domain bypasses the blocklist — the events arrive, the analytics are accurate. The cost is one rewrite block; the savings are ~30% of every funnel calculation you'll ever do.

Recipe.

// src/components/PostHogProvider.tsx
'use client';

import posthog from 'posthog-js';
import { PostHogProvider } from 'posthog-js/react';
import { useEffect } from 'react';

if (typeof window !== 'undefined') {
  posthog.init(process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY!, {
    api_host: '/ingest',                  // proxied — see rewrites below
    capture_pageview: false,              // we call manually with route context
    person_profiles: 'identified_only',
  });
}

export function PHProvider({ children }: { children: React.ReactNode }) {
  return {children};
}

// next.config.js — rewrite ingest URL to bypass ad-blockers
async rewrites() {
  return [
    { source: '/ingest/static/:path*', destination: 'https://us-assets.i.posthog.com/static/:path*' },
    { source: '/ingest/:path*',         destination: 'https://us.i.posthog.com/:path*' },
  ];
}

Event tagging — feature + surface, always

Principle. Every event carries a feature and surface tag; per-feature usage queries depend on it.

Why. Six months in, the question is "which features earn their maintenance cost?" That question is a GROUP BY feature away if the events are tagged, and a complete loss if they're not. Tagging on every event is one extra line; not tagging is a year of usage data that can't be sliced.

Recipe.

posthog.capture('customer_created', {
  feature: 'customers',          // which feature folder
  surface: 'customers_drawer',   // which surface
  org_id: orgId,
  source: 'manual',              // vs 'import' vs 'api'
});

Later: SELECT feature, count(*) FROM events GROUP BY feature ORDER BY 2 DESC is the answer to "which features earn their maintenance cost?"

Sentry — exception capture with user scope after auth

Principle. Exceptions are scoped to the user that triggered them; user context is attached after auth, not before.

Why. An exception without user context is a haystack — "something broke for someone." With user context, the same exception is "this broke for user X, here's their session." Attaching context after auth (rather than at module init) keeps anonymous traffic anonymous in the error stream and identified traffic identified.

Recipe.

// sentry.client.config.ts / sentry.server.config.ts
import * as Sentry from '@sentry/nextjs';

Sentry.init({
  dsn: process.env.NEXT_PUBLIC_SENTRY_DSN,
  tracesSampleRate: 0.1,                  // 10% perf sampling
  replaysSessionSampleRate: 0.0,
  replaysOnErrorSampleRate: 1.0,          // capture session on error
  environment: process.env.VERCEL_ENV ?? 'development',
});

# Python — Sentry SDK
import sentry_sdk
sentry_sdk.init(
    dsn=os.environ['SENTRY_DSN'],
    traces_sample_rate=0.1,
    environment=os.environ.get('ENV', 'development'),
)

Trace ID — propagate, don't regenerate

Principle. Every request carries a trace ID; if the caller sent one, propagate it; if not, generate it. Always echo it in the response.

Why. Trace IDs lose half their value if they break across service boundaries. A request that hits Next.js → Cloud Run service A → Cloud Run service B should carry the same ID through all three. Regenerating at each hop forces the support engineer to align three IDs by hand; propagating means one ID lines up across all three logs.

Recipe.

# Python / FastAPI
@app.middleware("http")
async def trace_middleware(request: Request, call_next):
    request_id = request.headers.get("x-request-id") or str(uuid.uuid4())
    request.state.request_id = request_id
    response = await call_next(request)
    response.headers["x-request-id"] = request_id
    return response

// Next.js middleware
export function middleware(req: NextRequest) {
  const requestId = req.headers.get('x-request-id') ?? crypto.randomUUID();
  const res = NextResponse.next();
  res.headers.set('x-request-id', requestId);
  return res;
}

Log the request ID with every structured log line.

Failure mode. Generating a new trace ID at every service hop — cross-service debugging requires manual log alignment, and the support conversation becomes "approximately what time?"

Structured logging — never console.log strings

Principle. Every log line is a structured record (JSON or equivalent); never raw string concatenation.

Why. A grep over pino JSON logs lets you filter by user_id, action, request_id, duration_ms. A grep over string-concatenated logs is "did the substring match?" — every new query is a new regex, no aggregation is possible. The cost of structured logging is one logger import; the benefit is every future incident investigation.

Recipe.

// Node — pino
import pino from 'pino';
export const logger = pino({
  level: process.env.LOG_LEVEL ?? 'info',
  formatters: { level: (label) => ({ level: label }) },
  base: { service: 'web', env: process.env.VERCEL_ENV },
});

logger.info({ user_id, request_id, action: 'customer.create' }, 'created customer');

# Python — structlog
import structlog
log = structlog.get_logger().bind(service='fleetsim')

log.info('simulation_started', request_id=request_id, fleet_id=fleet_id)

Activity log — DB-backed audit trail, fire-and-forget

Principle. Audit logging at the mutation boundary is fire-and-forget; same principle as the API layer.

Why. See factory-api.md §audit logging at mutation boundary and factory-data-layer.md §activity log table.

Recipe.

// fire-and-forget — never blocks mutations
export async function logAdminAction(input: {
  actor_id: string;
  action: string;
  subject_type?: string;
  subject_id?: string;
  metadata?: Record;
}): Promise {
  try {
    await db.insert(adminActions).values(input);
  } catch (err) {
    logger.error({ err, input }, 'audit_log_write_failed');
  }
}

Schema in factory-data-layer.md. Use for regulatory compliance, support investigations, customer-facing "who changed this?" displays.

What to log

Recipe only — the inclusion list.

• Actions and IDs: { user_id: 'u_xyz', action: 'updated_ssn', subject_id: 'c_abc' }
• Request context: trace ID, user agent (high-level), feature/surface tag
• Counts and durations: { duration_ms: 142, rows_affected: 3 }
• External system call results: status code, request ID echoed back (Stripe, Twilio, etc.)

What NOT to log

Principle. Log actions and IDs, never payloads. PII in logs creates compliance scope creep.

Why. Same principle as factory-security.md §logging — log actions and IDs, not payloads. Once payloads with PII land in the log stream, the log stream inherits the PII's protection requirements.

Recipe. Don't log:

• Raw PII / PHI payloads: full SSN, government IDs, financial account numbers
• Auth tokens / API keys: at any layer, ever
• Full request bodies: redact at the logger layer if you need to debug
• Decrypted ciphertext: see factory-security.md

Source patterns

Encode/monorepo (PostHog setup, ingest URL rewrite, PHProvider component), cothon (request logging middleware with trace ID propagation, x-request-id response header), kairos (adminActions table, fire-and-forget logAdminAction), fleet-advisor (activity logging at router-layer with action/object metadata), Obsidian software-factory-idea (PostHog + Sentry day-one commitment, per-tool usage queryability as layer-10 thesis).

Source & license

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

• Author: nonlinear-xyz
• Source: nonlinear-xyz/factory-kit
• License: MIT

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