observability-logs-search

A log-search guide for Observability, using ES|QL to find errors, spikes, trends, and unusual activity in service or container logs. ES|QL is Elasticsearch's query language for exploring data.

In plain words
What is it for?
Investigating incidents, filtering logs by time and service, measuring log volume, grouping results, and viewing nearby log entries for context.
Why use it?
It provides a repeatable way to narrow large volumes of incident logs to the records most likely to explain a problem.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

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 skills/elastic/cursor-plugins/logs-search
Any agent
npx skills add elastic/cursor-plugins --skill logs-search
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/elastic/cursor-plugins

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 42 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 3,723 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin 100% copy Near-identical to another mod 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 $0.00042 $0.03723
Opus 5 $0.00021 $0.01861
Sonnet 5 $0.00008 $0.00745
Haiku 4.5 $0.00004 $0.00372

Measured 2d ago against content hash ec434341ea8f, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

observability-logs-search 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 2d 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.

Origin

This is a copy

100% identical to observability-logs-search — 0 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

elastic/skills/observability/logs-search/SKILL.md · 238 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 238 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Search and filter logs to support incident investigation. The workflow mirrors Kibana Discover: apply a time range and scope filter, then iteratively add exclusion filters (NOT) until a small, interesting subset of logs remains—either the root cause or the key document. Optionally view logs in context (preceding and following that document) or pivot to another entity and start a fresh search. Use ES|QL only (POST /_query); do not use Query DSL.

When NOT to use

  • Metrics or traces — use the dedicated metric or trace tools.

Parameter conventions

Use consistent names for Observability log search:

Parameter Type Description
start string Start of time range (Elasticsearch date math, e.g. now-1h)
end string End of time range (e.g. now)
kqlFilter string KQL query string to narrow results. Not query, filter, or kql.
limit number Maximum log samples to return (e.g. 10–100)
groupBy string Optional field to group the histogram by (e.g. log.level, service.name)

For entity filters, use ECS field names: service.name, host.name, service.environment, kubernetes.pod.name, kubernetes.namespace. Query ECS names only; OpenTelemetry aliases map automatically in Observability indices.

Context minimization

Keep the context window small. In the sample branch of the query, KEEP only a subset of fields; do not return full documents by default. A small summary (e.g. 10 docs with KEEP) stays under ~1000 tokens; a single full JSON doc can exceed 4000 tokens.

Recommended KEEP list for sample logs:
message, error.message, service.name, container.name, host.name, container.id, agent.name, kubernetes.container.name, kubernetes.node.name, kubernetes.namespace, kubernetes.pod.name

Read the full file on GitHub · 238 lines

Files

What ships with it

1 file beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 2d ago First seen · 238 lines · 42 tokens per session scan A ec434341ea8f

Subscribe to this mod's changes

observability-logs-search is a skill published in the GitHub repository elastic/cursor-plugins (31 stars, last pushed 5d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 42 tokens to every session and 3,723 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. It is 100% identical to observability-logs-search, differing in 0 lines, and is treated as a copy.

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