query-patterns

query-patterns is a skill for Claude Code from honeycombio/agent-skill. It costs 131 tokens per session (1,680 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide to writing and interpreting Honeycomb queries for traces and events. It explains which calculations and filters reveal traffic, latency distributions, errors, and relationships between related records.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to choose percentiles, heatmaps, counts, distinct counts, calculated fields, query math, and filters for investigating application behavior.
Why use it?
It helps avoid summaries that hide slow or unusual requests, such as using an average that masks delays affecting some users.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the honeycomb plugin — 11 skills, 1 command, 2 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it to choose percentiles, heatmaps, counts, distinct counts, calculated fields, query math, and filters for investigating application behavior.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add honeycombio/agent-skill
Claude Code
/plugin install honeycomb

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install honeycomb, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 11 skills, 1 command, 2 agents, 2 hooks.

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 query-patterns

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/query-patterns/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/query-patterns)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/query-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/query-patterns/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for query-patterns

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/query-patterns"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/query-patterns.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 131 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,680 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00131 $0.01680
Opus 5.5 $0.00052 $0.00672
Sonnet 5.5 $0.00026 $0.00336
Haiku 4.5 $0.00013 $0.00168

Measured 10d ago against content hash f12650516007, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

query-patterns 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 10d 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.

honeycomb/skills/query-patterns/SKILL.md · 109 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 109 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Honeycomb Query Patterns

Opinionated guidance for writing effective Honeycomb queries. The MCP tools already document their parameters and schemas — this skill focuses on when and why to use each pattern, not how to call the tools.

Key Principles

  1. Never use AVG for latency — AVG hides tail latency. Use P99 (or P95/P90) to see what slow users experience. Reserve AVG for non-latency metrics like payload size.
  2. Use HEATMAP for distributions — Single-number aggregates hide bimodal patterns. HEATMAP reveals whether you have one population or two.
  3. Combine calculations in one query — COUNT, P99(duration_ms), HEATMAP(duration_ms) in a single query reduces API calls and gives a complete picture.
  4. Start broad, narrow with WHERE — Begin with a COUNT/GROUP BY to understand shape, then add filters to focus.
  5. Check for prior work — Call find_queries before writing new queries. Someone may have already answered the question.

Choosing the Right Operation

Question Use
How much traffic? COUNT grouped by route or service
How many unique users/IPs? COUNT_DISTINCT(field)
How fast for most users? P50(duration_ms)
How fast for the worst-off users? P99(duration_ms)
Is there a bimodal pattern? HEATMAP(duration_ms)
What's the worst case? MAX(duration_ms)
How many concurrent operations? CONCURRENCY
Is it getting worse over time? RATE_AVG(duration_ms)

Relational Field Strategy

Use relational prefixes to ask cross-span questions within a trace:

  • "Show me slow endpoints caused by a specific downstream": Filter with any.service.name to find traces where that service participates, group by root.http.route to see which user-facing endpoints are affected.
  • "What's different about errored traces?": Filter with any.error = true, group by root.name to see which entry points have errors somewhere in their trace tree.
  • Exclude noise: none.service.name = "health-check" removes traces containing health checks.

Read the full file on GitHub · 109 lines

Files

What ships with it

5 files 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. 10d ago Changed · -4 lines · -34 tokens per session f12650516007
  2. 1mo ago First seen · 113 lines · 165 tokens per session scan A e73cc391d9f8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

query-patterns is a skill published in the GitHub repository honeycombio/agent-skill (28 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 131 tokens to every session and 1,680 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5.5. 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 2026-08-30.

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