Common Workflows

Incident Triage

Step-by-step workflow for investigating production issues.

# 1. Quick error overview
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli errors --from 1h --pretty

# 2. Is this new? Compare to previous period
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs compare --query "status:error" --period 1h --pretty

# 3. Find error patterns
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs patterns --query "status:error" --from 1h --pretty

# 4. Narrow down by service
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs search --query "status:error service:payment-api" --from 1h --pretty

# 5. Get context around a specific timestamp
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs context --timestamp "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z" --service api --before 5m --after 2m --pretty

# 6. Follow the distributed trace
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs trace --id "TRACE_ID" --pretty

Real-time Debugging

Monitor logs as they arrive.

# Stream all errors
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs tail --query "status:error" --pretty

# Watch specific service
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs tail --query "service:api status:error" --pretty

# Monitor deployments
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs tail --query "service:deploy" --pretty

Service Health Check

Assess overall service health.

# List all services
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli services --from 24h --pretty

# Check error distribution for a service
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs agg --query "service:api" --facet status --from 1h --pretty

# Check CPU/memory usage
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli metrics query --query "avg:system.cpu.user{service:api}" --from 1h --pretty
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli metrics query --query "avg:system.mem.used{service:api}" --from 1h --pretty

# Error summary for service
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli errors --service api --from 24h --pretty

Export for Sharing

Save results to files for reports or sharing.

# Save search results
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs search --query "status:error" --from 1h --output errors.json --pretty

# Save error summary
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli errors --from 24h --output error-report.json --pretty

# Save metrics data
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli metrics query --query "avg:system.cpu.user{*}" --from 24h --output cpu-metrics.json --pretty

Multi-Query Investigation

Run parallel queries for comprehensive view.

# Compare error types across services
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs multi \
  --queries "api-errors:service:api status:error,payment-errors:service:payment status:error,auth-errors:service:auth status:error" \
  --from 1h --pretty

⚠️ Safe Dashboard Update

CRITICAL: Dashboard updates are destructive and replace the entire dashboard.

Follow the Safe Dashboard Update Workflow in dashboards.md to avoid data loss.