Observability Review

Review code from an observability and debugging perspective.

Review Checklist

Logging

• Verify important operations are logged at appropriate levels
• Check log messages include sufficient context (IDs, parameters)
• Ensure structured logging format is used consistently
• Verify sensitive data is not logged (passwords, tokens, PII)

Log Levels

• DEBUG: Detailed flow information for development
• INFO: Key business events and state transitions
• WARN: Recoverable issues that need attention
• ERROR: Failures requiring investigation
• Verify log level usage matches the above semantics

Metrics & Monitoring

• Check key business metrics are tracked (request count, latency)
• Verify error rates are monitored with thresholds
• Ensure resource usage is tracked (memory, connections, queue depth)
• Check custom metrics for domain-specific health indicators

Distributed Tracing

• Verify trace/correlation IDs propagate across service boundaries
• Check spans are created for significant operations
• Ensure trace context is included in log entries
• Verify async operations maintain trace context

Alerting & Diagnostics

• Check health check endpoints exist and are meaningful
• Verify error conditions trigger appropriate alerts
• Ensure diagnostic information is accessible in production
• Check feature flags and configuration are observable

Debugging Support

• Verify error messages help identify root cause
• Check stack traces are preserved through error handling
• Ensure request/response payloads are loggable (at debug level)
• Verify state transitions are traceable in logs

Output Format

Priority	Description
Critical	No visibility into failure path, blind spot in production
High	Key operation not observable, hard to troubleshoot
Medium	Logging exists but lacks context or structure
Low	Enhancement for faster debugging