observe

observe is a command for coding agents from srstomp/pokayokay. It costs 7 tokens per session (1,098 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A workflow for adding observability, meaning logs, measurements, traces, and alerts that show what software is doing in operation.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to design or implement logging, metrics, distributed tracing, alerting, dashboards, request context, and monitoring goals.
Why use it?
It helps developers and operators find failures, measure performance, follow requests across services, and receive warnings about problems.

Command

Part of the pokayokay plugin — 24 skills, 23 commands, 14 agents, 4 hooks, 1 MCP server shipped together

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/srstomp/pokayokay/observe
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/srstomp/pokayokay

Or install pokayokay, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 24 skills, 23 commands, 14 agents, 4 hooks, 1 MCP server.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for observe

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/srstomp/pokayokay/observe.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/commands/srstomp/pokayokay/observe)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/commands/srstomp/pokayokay/observe"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/commands/srstomp/pokayokay/observe.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>
Per session 7 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,098 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00007 $0.01098
Opus 5 $0.00003 $0.00549
Sonnet 5 $0.00001 $0.00220
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00110

Measured 5d ago against content hash c72182e16799, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

observe scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 5d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

plugins/pokayokay/commands/observe.md · 159 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 159 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Observability Workflow

Add observability for: $ARGUMENTS

Mode Detection

Parse $ARGUMENTS to determine mode:

  • --audit flag present → Observability gap analysis mode (creates tasks for gaps)
  • No flag → Design/implement mode (default behavior)

Steps

1. Identify Observability Need

From $ARGUMENTS, determine:

  • Logging: Structured logs for debugging
  • Metrics: Numerical measurements for monitoring
  • Tracing: Request flow across services
  • Alerting: Notifications for issues

2. Assess Current State

Check existing setup:

  • Logging library (Pino, Winston, console)
  • Metrics system (Prometheus, DataDog, CloudWatch)
  • Tracing (OpenTelemetry, Jaeger)
  • Alerting rules

3. Design Observability

For Logging:

  • Define log levels (error, warn, info, debug)
  • Structure log format (JSON)
  • Add context (request ID, user ID)
  • Configure log rotation

For Metrics:

  • Identify key metrics (latency, throughput, errors)
  • Define SLIs/SLOs
  • Set up dashboards
  • Configure retention

For Tracing:

  • Instrument entry points
  • Propagate context
  • Add span attributes
  • Configure sampling

For Alerting:

  • Define alert conditions
  • Set thresholds
  • Configure notification channels
  • Design escalation

4. Create Implementation Tasks

npx @stevestomp/ohno-cli create "Observability: [specific task]" -t chore

Audit Mode (--audit flag)

When --audit is specified, switch to observability gap analysis mode:

Audit Steps

  1. Inventory Current Observability Scan codebase for:
  • Logging statements and configuration
  • Metrics instrumentation
  • Tracing setup
  • Alerting rules
  1. Map Critical Paths Identify components that MUST have observability:
  • API endpoints (latency, errors, throughput)
  • Database operations (query time, connection pool)
  • External service calls (availability, latency)
  • Authentication flows (attempts, failures)
  • Payment/transaction flows (success rate, failures)
  1. Identify Gaps by Environment

Read the full file on GitHub · 159 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 5d ago First seen · 159 lines · 7 tokens per session scan A c72182e16799

Subscribe to this mod's changes

observe is a command published in the GitHub repository srstomp/pokayokay (9 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 7 tokens to every session and 1,098 once invoked, about $0.0000 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-31.