---

name: posthog-observability description: | Set up comprehensive observability for PostHog integrations with metrics, traces, and alerts. Use when implementing monitoring for PostHog operations, setting up dashboards, or configuring alerting for PostHog integration health. Trigger with phrases like "posthog monitoring", "posthog metrics", "posthog observability", "monitor posthog", "posthog alerts", "posthog tracing". allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit version: 1.0.0 license: MIT author: Jeremy Longshore jeremy@intentsolutions.io

PostHog Observability

Overview

Set up comprehensive observability for PostHog integrations.

Prerequisites

• Prometheus or compatible metrics backend
• OpenTelemetry SDK installed
• Grafana or similar dashboarding tool
• AlertManager configured

Metrics Collection

Key Metrics

Prometheus Metrics

Copyimport { Registry, Counter, Histogram, Gauge } from 'prom-client';

const registry = new Registry();

const requestCounter = new Counter({
  name: 'posthog_requests_total',
  help: 'Total PostHog API requests',
  labelNames: ['method', 'status'],
  registers: [registry],
});

const requestDuration = new Histogram({
  name: 'posthog_request_duration_seconds',
  help: 'PostHog request duration',
  labelNames: ['method'],
  buckets: [0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5],
  registers: [registry],
});

const errorCounter = new Counter({
  name: 'posthog_errors_total',
  help: 'PostHog errors by type',
  labelNames: ['error_type'],
  registers: [registry],
});

Instrumented Client

Copyasync function instrumentedRequest<T>(
  method: string,
  operation: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<T> {
  const timer = requestDuration.startTimer({ method });

  try {
    const result = await operation();
    requestCounter.inc({ method, status: 'success' });
    return result;
  } catch (error: any) {
    requestCounter.inc({ method, status: 'error' });
    errorCounter.inc({ error_type: error.code || 'unknown' });
    throw error;
  } finally {
    timer();
  }
}

Distributed Tracing

OpenTelemetry Setup

Copyimport { trace, SpanStatusCode } from '@opentelemetry/api';

const tracer = trace.getTracer('posthog-client');

async function tracedPostHogCall<T>(
  operationName: string,
  operation: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<T> {
  return tracer.startActiveSpan(`posthog.${operationName}`, async (span) => {
    try {
      const result = await operation();
      span.setStatus({ code: SpanStatusCode.OK });
      return result;
    } catch (error: any) {
      span.setStatus({ code: SpanStatusCode.ERROR, message: error.message });
      span.recordException(error);
      throw error;
    } finally {
      span.end();
    }
  });
}

Logging Strategy

Structured Logging

Copyimport pino from 'pino';

const logger = pino({
  name: 'posthog',
  level: process.env.LOG_LEVEL || 'info',
});

function logPostHogOperation(
  operation: string,
  data: Record<string, any>,
  duration: number
) {
  logger.info({
    service: 'posthog',
    operation,
    duration_ms: duration,
    ...data,
  });
}

Alert Configuration

Prometheus AlertManager Rules

Copy# posthog_alerts.yaml
groups:
  - name: posthog_alerts
    rules:
      - alert: PostHogHighErrorRate
        expr: |
          rate(posthog_errors_total[5m]) /
          rate(posthog_requests_total[5m]) > 0.05
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "PostHog error rate > 5%"

      - alert: PostHogHighLatency
        expr: |
          histogram_quantile(0.95,
            rate(posthog_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])
          ) > 2
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "PostHog P95 latency > 2s"

      - alert: PostHogDown
        expr: up{job="posthog"} == 0
        for: 1m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "PostHog integration is down"

Dashboard

Grafana Panel Queries

Copy{
  "panels": [
    {
      "title": "PostHog Request Rate",
      "targets": [{
        "expr": "rate(posthog_requests_total[5m])"
      }]
    },
    {
      "title": "PostHog Latency P50/P95/P99",
      "targets": [{
        "expr": "histogram_quantile(0.5, rate(posthog_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m]))"
      }]
    }
  ]
}

Instructions

Step 1: Set Up Metrics Collection

Implement Prometheus counters, histograms, and gauges for key operations.

Step 2: Add Distributed Tracing

Integrate OpenTelemetry for end-to-end request tracing.

Step 3: Configure Structured Logging

Set up JSON logging with consistent field names.

Step 4: Create Alert Rules

Define Prometheus alerting rules for error rates and latency.

Output

• Metrics collection enabled
• Distributed tracing configured
• Structured logging implemented
• Alert rules deployed

Error Handling

Examples

Quick Metrics Endpoint

Copyapp.get('/metrics', async (req, res) => {
  res.set('Content-Type', registry.contentType);
  res.send(await registry.metrics());
});

Resources

• Prometheus Best Practices
• OpenTelemetry Documentation
• PostHog Observability Guide

Next Steps

For incident response, see posthog-incident-runbook.