Dd Monitors
DatadogOfficialCreated by datadog-labs
- Skill
- Tool integration
- Cloud and DevOps
- MIT
- No issues found
AutoGineer summary
Written by AutoGineer from the skill’s own files, not by the author
The dd-monitors skill provides a structured approach to managing Datadog monitors via the pup CLI. It covers the full lifecycle of monitor management, including listing, searching, and creating monitors from file-based definitions. Beyond basic operations, the skill emphasizes operational excellence by providing guidelines for reducing alert fatigue, implementing proper scoping, setting recovery thresholds, and maintaining actionable runbooks. It also includes patterns for auditing monitor health and handling silences through downtime management.
What it does
- Lists and searches existing Datadog monitors using CLI commands.
- Creates new monitors using JSON configuration files.
- Provides best practices for configuring alert thresholds to prevent flapping.
- Offers guidance on adding context and runbook links to alert messages.
- Includes patterns for auditing monitors to identify noisy alerts or missing ownership.
- Defines safe workflows for marking monitors for deletion instead of direct removal.
When to use it
- When you need to automate the deployment or management of Datadog monitors.
- When you are troubleshooting alert fatigue or noisy notification channels.
- When you need to perform bulk audits of monitor configurations or ownership.
- When you need to schedule planned silences for maintenance using downtime payloads.
Advantages
- Promotes consistent alerting standards across teams.
- Reduces manual effort through file-based monitor definitions.
- Improves incident response by encouraging actionable alert messages.
- Provides clear patterns for safe monitor lifecycle management.
Usage examples
- “List all monitors tagged with team:platform.”
- The agent executes the pup monitors list command filtered by the specified tag to return relevant monitor IDs and names.
- “Create a new monitor using the configuration in monitor.json.”
- The agent uses the pup monitors create command to register the monitor defined in the local file.
Install
Download the skill as a ZIP:
https://mp-staging.autogineer.com/agent-skills/datadog-labs/dd-monitors/downloadUnzip it into the cross-client skills folder of your project:
mkdir -p .agents/skills && unzip dd-monitors.zip -d .agents/skills
Documentation by datadog-labs
Datadog Monitors
Create, manage, and maintain monitors for alerting.
Prerequisites
This requires pup in your path. See Setup Pup.
Command Execution Order (Token-Efficient)
For scoped commands, use this order:
Check context first (prior outputs, conversation, saved values).
If a required value is missing, run a discovery command first.
If still ambiguous, ask the user to confirm.
Then run the target command.
Avoid speculative commands likely to fail.
Quick Start
pup auth loginCommon Operations
List Monitors
pup monitors list
pup monitors list --tags "team:platform"Get Monitor
pup monitors get <id>Create Monitor
pup monitors create --file monitor.jsonSilence Alerts (Downtime)
# No pup monitors mute/unmute commands.
# Use downtime payloads to silence monitor notifications.
pup downtime create --file downtime.json
pup downtime cancel <downtime_id>Monitor Creation Best Practices
1. Avoid Alert Fatigue
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| No flapping alerts | Use last_Xm not last_1m |
| Meaningful thresholds | Based on SLOs, not guesses |
| Actionable alerts | If no action needed, don't alert |
| Include runbook | @runbook-url in message |
# WRONG - will flap constantly
query = "avg(last_1m):avg:system.cpu.user{*} > 50" # ❌ Too sensitive
# CORRECT - stable alerting
query = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:prod} by {host} > 80" # ✅ Reasonable window2. Use Proper Scoping
# WRONG - alerts on everything
query = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{*} > 80" # ❌ No scope
# CORRECT - scoped to what matters
query = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:prod,service:api} by {host} > 80" # ✅3. Set Recovery Thresholds
monitor = {
"query": "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:prod} > 80",
"options": {
"thresholds": {
"critical": 80,
"critical_recovery": 70, # ✅ Prevents flapping
"warning": 60,
"warning_recovery": 50
}
}
}4. Include Context in Messages
message = """
## High CPU Alert
Host: {{host.name}}
Current Value: {{value}}
Threshold: {{threshold}}
### Runbook
1. Check top processes: `ssh {{host.name}} 'top -bn1 | head -20'`
2. Check recent deploys
3. Scale if needed
@slack-ops @pagerduty-oncall
"""NEVER Delete Monitors Directly
Use safe deletion workflow (same as dashboards):
def safe_mark_monitor_for_deletion(monitor_id: str, client) -> bool:
"""Mark monitor instead of deleting."""
monitor = client.get_monitor(monitor_id)
name = monitor.get("name", "")
if "[MARKED FOR DELETION]" in name:
print(f"Already marked: {name}")
return False
new_name = f"[MARKED FOR DELETION] {name}"
client.update_monitor(monitor_id, {"name": new_name})
print(f"✓ Marked: {new_name}")
return TrueMonitor Types
| Type | Use Case |
|---|---|
metric alert | CPU, memory, custom metrics |
query alert | Complex metric queries |
service check | Agent check status |
event alert | Event stream patterns |
log alert | Log pattern matching |
composite | Combine multiple monitors |
apm | APM metrics |
Audit Monitors
# Find monitors without owners
pup monitors list | jq '.data[] | select(.tags | contains(["team:"]) | not) | {id, name}'
# Find noisy monitors (high alert count)
pup monitors list | jq '.data | sort_by(.overall_state_modified) | .[:10] | .[] | {id, name, status: .overall_state}'Downtime vs Muting
| Use | When |
|---|---|
| Downtime | Any planned silence window |
| Monitor edit | Query/threshold behavior changes |
# Downtime (preferred)
pup downtime create --file downtime.jsonFailure Handling
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Alert not firing | Check query returns data, thresholds |
| Too many alerts | Increase window, add recovery threshold |
| No data alerts | Check agent connectivity, metric exists |
| Auth error | pup auth refresh |
References
Files
- ATTRIBUTION.mdAdded by AutoGineer932 B
- LICENSELicence file added by AutoGineer1.1 KiB
- SKILL.md4.7 KiB
SKILL.md
Datadog Monitors
Create, manage, and maintain monitors for alerting.
Prerequisites
This requires pup in your path. See Setup Pup.
Command Execution Order (Token-Efficient)
For scoped commands, use this order:
Check context first (prior outputs, conversation, saved values).
If a required value is missing, run a discovery command first.
If still ambiguous, ask the user to confirm.
Then run the target command.
Avoid speculative commands likely to fail.
Quick Start
pup auth loginCommon Operations
List Monitors
pup monitors list
pup monitors list --tags "team:platform"Get Monitor
pup monitors get <id>Create Monitor
pup monitors create --file monitor.jsonSilence Alerts (Downtime)
# No pup monitors mute/unmute commands.
# Use downtime payloads to silence monitor notifications.
pup downtime create --file downtime.json
pup downtime cancel <downtime_id>Monitor Creation Best Practices
1. Avoid Alert Fatigue
| Rule | Why |
|---|---|
| No flapping alerts | Use last_Xm not last_1m |
| Meaningful thresholds | Based on SLOs, not guesses |
| Actionable alerts | If no action needed, don't alert |
| Include runbook | @runbook-url in message |
# WRONG - will flap constantly
query = "avg(last_1m):avg:system.cpu.user{*} > 50" # ❌ Too sensitive
# CORRECT - stable alerting
query = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:prod} by {host} > 80" # ✅ Reasonable window2. Use Proper Scoping
# WRONG - alerts on everything
query = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{*} > 80" # ❌ No scope
# CORRECT - scoped to what matters
query = "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:prod,service:api} by {host} > 80" # ✅3. Set Recovery Thresholds
monitor = {
"query": "avg(last_5m):avg:system.cpu.user{env:prod} > 80",
"options": {
"thresholds": {
"critical": 80,
"critical_recovery": 70, # ✅ Prevents flapping
"warning": 60,
"warning_recovery": 50
}
}
}4. Include Context in Messages
message = """
## High CPU Alert
Host: {{host.name}}
Current Value: {{value}}
Threshold: {{threshold}}
### Runbook
1. Check top processes: `ssh {{host.name}} 'top -bn1 | head -20'`
2. Check recent deploys
3. Scale if needed
@slack-ops @pagerduty-oncall
"""NEVER Delete Monitors Directly
Use safe deletion workflow (same as dashboards):
def safe_mark_monitor_for_deletion(monitor_id: str, client) -> bool:
"""Mark monitor instead of deleting."""
monitor = client.get_monitor(monitor_id)
name = monitor.get("name", "")
if "[MARKED FOR DELETION]" in name:
print(f"Already marked: {name}")
return False
new_name = f"[MARKED FOR DELETION] {name}"
client.update_monitor(monitor_id, {"name": new_name})
print(f"✓ Marked: {new_name}")
return TrueMonitor Types
| Type | Use Case |
|---|---|
metric alert | CPU, memory, custom metrics |
query alert | Complex metric queries |
service check | Agent check status |
event alert | Event stream patterns |
log alert | Log pattern matching |
composite | Combine multiple monitors |
apm | APM metrics |
Audit Monitors
# Find monitors without owners
pup monitors list | jq '.data[] | select(.tags | contains(["team:"]) | not) | {id, name}'
# Find noisy monitors (high alert count)
pup monitors list | jq '.data | sort_by(.overall_state_modified) | .[:10] | .[] | {id, name, status: .overall_state}'Downtime vs Muting
| Use | When |
|---|---|
| Downtime | Any planned silence window |
| Monitor edit | Query/threshold behavior changes |
# Downtime (preferred)
pup downtime create --file downtime.jsonFailure Handling
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| Alert not firing | Check query returns data, thresholds |
| Too many alerts | Increase window, add recovery threshold |
| No data alerts | Check agent connectivity, metric exists |
| Auth error | pup auth refresh |
References
Requirements and compatibility
Works with: Claude Code, Claude apps, OpenAI Codex, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Kiro, OpenCode, Goose, Amp, Roo Code, JetBrains Junie, Factory Droid, Devin (ex-Windsurf), Mistral Vibe, OpenHands, Letta
“Works with” means the tool reads the open Agent Skills format; a skill written for one tool may use features others lack.
Needs: Needs Python
Security
No issues found by our static scan· No issues found
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Attribution and licence
- Created by
- datadog-labs
- Publisher
- Datadog (Official)
- Source
- datadog-labs/agent-skills · dd-monitors · commit 8e1306a
- Licence
- MIT License (redistribution allowed)
- LICENSE (added by AutoGineer from LICENSE)
- ATTRIBUTION.md (written by AutoGineer)
- Synced
AutoGineer is not affiliated with or endorsed by datadog-labs or Datadog.
Download ZIP
The ZIP holds the skill’s files, its licence files and an ATTRIBUTION.md. Download dd-monitors.zip