---
type: reference
title: Observability Provisioning
description: "Monitoring config as code: the config triad, deploy copiers, planner mappings, and where each change type lands."
tags: [observability, prometheus, grafana, provisioning, deployment]
timestamp: 2026-10-21T00:00:00-07:00
---

# Observability Provisioning

The monitoring stack is **provisioned as code**: dashboards, datasources,
scrape jobs and alert rules live in the repo and ride the normal deploy flow.
No hand-edits inside containers — they are wiped on recreate and never
committed.

## The config triad

| Repo path | What it holds |
|---|---|
| `shared/prometheus/prometheus.yml` | scrape jobs (global + per-host) |
| `shared/prometheus/rules/llm-fleet.yml` | alert rules + recording rules |
| `shared/grafana/provisioning/` | datasources + dashboards (provisioned tree) |

Targets and datasources reference **container names** (`grafana:3000`
`loki:3100` — `shared/prometheus/prometheus.yml:52-61`), never
loopback-published ports; `alloy` is **not scraped at all** (no job in the
config — its `127.0.0.1:12345` UI is only probed by the homepage timer,
`shared/homepage/services.json:233`). The LLM endpoints split by topology: the
two same-host ones (`frank-dragoon` `:7770`, `frank-zealot` `:7771`) are
scraped as `host.containers.internal:<port>` because a bridge container cannot
reach a host-netns bind at the host's LAN IP (`prometheus.yml:89-99`), and only
the endpoint on another machine (`192.168.0.235:7770`) is addressed by LAN IP
(`prometheus.yml:128-131`). Prometheus 3 refuses HTML responses as metrics —
HTML-scraped "probes" are structurally inert and need a blackbox exporter (see
[[Stale Signal Audit]]).

## The deploy path

`scripts/deploy-remote.sh` carries one copier per config surface, all called
from `deploy_observability`:

- `copy_prometheus_config` → `/opt/prometheus/config/prometheus.yml` **and** `config/rules/llm-fleet.yml` (`:219-227`)
- `copy_alertmanager_config` → `/opt/alertmanager/config/alertmanager.yml` (`:232-235`)
- `install_signal_relay` → the user unit + iptables + the health wait on `192.168.0.143:18093/health` (`:243-274`)
- `copy_loki_config` → `/opt/loki/config/loki-config.yaml` (`:276-279`)
- `copy_alloy_config` → `/opt/alloy/config/config.alloy` (`:281-284`)
- `copy_grafana_provisioning` → `/opt/grafana/provisioning/` (`:286-300`)

`scripts/deploy-plan.py` maps `shared/prometheus/**` to `prometheus` (plus
`alertmanager` when the changed file is `alertmanager.yml`, `:251-256`)
`shared/loki/**` to `loki` and `shared/alloy/**` to `alloy` (`:257-260`), and
`shared/grafana/**` to `grafana` (`:261-264`); changes under
`dankclaw/observability/` select the touched unit and its dependency consumer
(`:321-328`), and a change to either relay file redeploys `alertmanager`
(`:399-402`). So `deploy.sh dankclaw --service grafana` (etc.) restarts only
what the change touched. Seam tests in `tests/observability_quadlet.bats` pin
the unit files exist and are boot-persistent/self-healing (`:36-62`), that no
unit publishes on a wildcard (`:63-81`), that the copiers install each unit
(`:250`), that grafana provisioning is declared in git and installed
(`:345`), and that the provisioned paths match the units' mounts.

## Entry points

**Add a scrape target** — edit `shared/prometheus/prometheus.yml`. Decide the
vantage first: container name if the exporter is a container on
`dankclaw_default`; `host.containers.internal:<port>` if it is a process in the
host's own network namespace **on this same machine** (a bridge container
cannot reach the host's LAN IP at an unpublished port); the host's LAN IP only
if it is a process on a **different** machine; a blackbox module if it is an
HTTP probe, not a metrics endpoint.

**Add an alert/recording rule** — edit `shared/prometheus/rules/llm-fleet.yml`.
Current delivered set: **4 alert rules + 2 recording rules** —
`LlmRequestsQueueing`, `LlmPrefixCacheCollapse`, `LlmSpecDecodeOff`
`LlmEndpointDown`, plus `job:llm_prefix_cache_reuse:rate5m` and
`job:llm_spec_accept_length:rate5m` (`shared/prometheus/rules/llm-fleet.yml:32-110`)
confirmed live: `curl -s http://127.0.0.1:9090/api/v1/rules` (2026-10-18)
reports 4 alerting + 2 recording. Rules reload with the prometheus service.

**Add a datasource** — drop a YAML file into
`shared/grafana/provisioning/datasources/`. Point it at the container name of
the backend (`http://prometheus:9090`), not loopback.

**Add a dashboard** — drop the JSON into
`shared/grafana/provisioning/dashboards/`. Provisioned dashboards live in
unified storage, not (only) the SQLite table — grep the API, not the DB, when
verifying (see the verify section of [[Fleet Audit and Posture]]). *(unverified
2026-10-18: the storage-backend claim needs an admin password to confirm
against `grafana.db` and the API side by side)*

## Verify through the APIs, not the filesystem

```bash
# prometheus: rules and targets actually loaded
curl -s http://127.0.0.1:9090/api/v1/rules | python3 -m json.tool | head
curl -s "http://127.0.0.1:9090/api/v1/targets?state=active" | \
  python3 -c "import json,sys; [print(t['labels'].get('job'), t['health'], (t['lastError'] or '')[:60]) for t in json.load(sys.stdin)['data']['activeTargets']]"
# grafana: datasource + dashboard provisioned
curl -s -u admin:<pw> http://127.0.0.1:3002/api/datasources | python3 -m json.tool | grep -E '"name"|"url"'
```

The two Prometheus queries were run on 2026-10-18 and are what every number on
this page comes from: 4 alerting + 2 recording rules, and `up` for
`prometheus`, `node-dankclaw`, `node-dankserver`, `grafana`, `loki`
`frank-zealot`, `frank-dragoon`, `frank-archon` with the four structural downs
listed in [[Prometheus]]. The Grafana query needs the local admin password and
was not run here; the filesystem side (`ls /opt/grafana/provisioning/*`) is
proof of installation only — see the next paragraph.

Health answers from a stale process and provisioned resources can hide in
unified storage — a file existing on disk is not proof the running server
loaded it. See [[Stale Signal Audit]] for the never-green-target decision
table (refused = outage, 404/HTML = config defect).

## Related

- [[Observability]] — stack topology and the alert delivery chain
- [[Stale Signal Audit]] — classifying down targets before "fixing" them, and the
  down-beside-healthy / alert-state-persistence / candidate-arm rules
- [[Quadlet Lifecycle]] — the units that host these services
- [[Deploy State Triage]] — how the planner selects these services