Monitor

Monitor

This skill is for production monitoring and incident response. For debugging specific bugs, use debug. For pre-launch readiness checks, use go-live. For security-specific monitoring (auth events, API abuse), use secure. For analytics and user behavior tracking, use analytics.

Don't Do Yet

• Don't pay for monitoring tools until you've outgrown the free tiers. UptimeRobot + Sentry free handles most early-stage apps.
• Don't set up DataDog, New Relic, or Grafana. These are enterprise tools. You don't need them with < 1,000 users.
• Don't build custom dashboards. Your hosting platform (Vercel, Railway) has built-in metrics. Use those first.
• Don't monitor everything. Three things matter at launch: is it up, are there errors, is it slow. That's it.

Monitoring Checklist

Basic Monitoring:
- [ ] Uptime monitoring (is site up?)
- [ ] Error tracking (are errors happening?)
- [ ] Performance monitoring (is it slow?)
- [ ] User activity (are people using it?)
- [ ] Critical alerts configured
- [ ] Check dashboard daily

See MONITORING-SETUP.md for implementation.

---

Why Monitor?

Without monitoring:

• Users hit errors, you don't know
• Site goes down, you find out from Twitter
• Slow performance, users leave silently
• Security issues, no alert

With monitoring:

• Errors show in dashboard immediately
• Get text when site goes down
• See performance degradation
• Catch issues before users complain

Goal: Know about problems before users tell you.

---

Three Essential Monitors

1. Is It Up?

Uptime monitoring - Pings your app every minute

Free tools:

• UptimeRobot (free, 50 monitors)
• Pingdom (limited free tier)
• Vercel/Netlify (built-in for deployed apps)

Setup:

1. Sign up for UptimeRobot
2. Add monitor for https://yourapp.com
3. Add your email for alerts
4. Get texted if site is down

2. Are There Errors?

Error tracking - Captures JavaScript errors and API failures

Free tools:

• Sentry (free tier: 5k errors/month)
• LogRocket (limited free)
• Vercel/Netlify logs (for deployed apps)

Claude Code:

Add Sentry error tracking to my app:
- Install @sentry/nextjs (or appropriate package)
- Capture all frontend errors and API errors
- Include user context (email, ID)
- Configure source maps for readable stack traces
- Set up Sentry.init in both client and server entry points

Lovable / Replit (paste into chat):

Add error tracking to my app. I want to be notified when errors happen.
Use Sentry (free tier). Show me how to:
1. Create a Sentry account and project
2. Add the tracking code to my app
3. Test that errors are being captured

3. Is It Slow?

Performance monitoring - Tracks page load times

Free tools:

• Vercel Analytics (built-in)
• Google PageSpeed Insights (free)
• Cloudflare Analytics (free tier)

Setup:

• Usually automatic with hosting platform
• Check dashboard weekly

---

What to Monitor

Critical Metrics

Must monitor:

• Site uptime (99%+)
• Error rate (< 1% of requests)
• API response time (< 500ms)
• Page load time (< 3s)

Nice to have:

• Active users
• Feature usage
• Conversion rates
• User paths

For MVP: Focus on the "must monitor" only.

---

Setting Up Alerts

Configure alerts for:

Critical (text me immediately):

• Site is down
• Error rate spike (10x normal)
• Database connection lost
• Payment processing failing

Important (email within hour):

• API slow (>2 seconds)
• Error rate elevated (2x normal)
• Disk space low (>80%)

Informational (daily digest):

• New errors discovered
• Performance trending down
• Traffic patterns

Tell AI:

Configure monitoring alerts:
- Critical: Text to [phone]
- Important: Email to [email]
- Send summary: Daily at 9am

---

Daily Monitoring Routine

5-minute morning check:

Daily Check:
1. Open monitoring dashboard
2. Check uptime (should be 100% yesterday)
3. Check error count (any spikes?)
4. Check performance (slower than usual?)
5. Review any alerts from overnight

If all green: You're done, 5 minutes.

If red: Investigate using debug skill.

---

Reading Monitoring Dashboards

Uptime Dashboard

Green: Site responding Red: Site down or slow to respond

What to check:

• Uptime percentage (target: 99%+)
• Response time (target: <500ms)
• Recent downtime incidents

Error Dashboard

Look for:

• Error count spikes (sudden jump)
• New error types (didn't see before)
• Affected users (how many hit this?)
• Error frequency (happening a lot?)

Priority:

• Affecting many users → High priority
• Blocking key features → High priority
• Edge case error → Lower priority

Performance Dashboard

Look for:

• Load time trending up (getting slower)
• Slow endpoints (which API calls)
• Slow pages (which routes)
• Geographic differences (slow in specific regions)

---

Error Investigation

When errors spike:

1. Open error tracking dashboard (Sentry)
2. Find the most frequent error
3. Read error message and stack trace
4. Note: How many users affected?
5. Note: Started when?
6. Check: Did we deploy recently?

Give to AI:

Error in production:
[Paste error message and stack trace]

Affected: [X] users in last [Y] hours
Started: [timestamp]
Recent deploys: [any?]

Please:
1. Explain what's wrong
2. Propose hotfix
3. How to test before deploying

---

User-Reported Issues

When user reports problem:

User Report Investigation:
1. Can you reproduce it?
2. Check monitoring for errors at that time
3. Check logs for that user
4. Check if others affected
5. Determine severity

Then use debug skill to fix.

Tell AI:

User reported: [issue description]
User: [email or ID]
Timestamp: [when it happened]

Check monitoring and logs for this user at this time.
What errors or issues do you see?

---

Proactive Monitoring

Catch issues before users:

Weekly checks:

Weekly Review:
- [ ] Error trends (going up or down?)
- [ ] Performance trends (slower?)
- [ ] New error types introduced
- [ ] Uptime issues resolved
- [ ] Alert noise (too many false alerts?)

Monthly checks:

Monthly Health:
- [ ] Compare to last month
- [ ] Any degradation?
- [ ] Any improvements?
- [ ] Monitoring gaps (what's not tracked?)

---

Free Monitoring Stack

Recommended for MVP:

Uptime:

• UptimeRobot (free) - 50 monitors

Errors:

• Sentry (free) - 5k errors/month

Performance:

• Vercel Analytics (free on Vercel)
• Cloudflare Analytics (free)

Logs:

• Platform logs (Vercel, Netlify, Railway)

Cost: $0/month until you need more.

---

When to Upgrade Monitoring

Upgrade when:

• Hitting free tier limits
• Need more detailed analytics
• Need faster alert response
• Need advanced features (session replay, etc.)

Paid tiers (typically $20-50/mo):

• Sentry Pro ($26/mo)
• LogRocket ($99/mo - session replay)
• DataDog ($15/host/mo)

For < 1000 users: Free tiers sufficient.

---

Common Monitoring Mistakes

---

Interpreting Trends

Good trends:

• Errors decreasing
• Performance improving
• Uptime stable at 99.9%+

Warning trends:

• Errors slowly increasing
• Performance slowly degrading
• Uptime dipping below 99%

Critical trends:

• Sudden error spike
• Sudden performance drop
• Multiple downtime incidents

Action: Address warning trends before they become critical.

---

Logging vs Monitoring

Logging:

• Records what happened
• For debugging specific issues
• Detailed, verbose
• Review when investigating

Monitoring:

• Tracks overall health
• For catching issues early
• High-level metrics
• Review daily

Both needed: Monitoring alerts you, logs help debug.

---

Setting Up Logging

Tell AI:

Add application logging:
- Log all errors with context
- Log API requests/responses
- Log slow operations (>1s)
- Log authentication events
- Don't log sensitive data

Format: JSON with timestamp, level, message, context
Send to: [Platform logs or external service]

Log levels:

• ERROR: Something broke
• WARN: Something concerning
• INFO: Normal operations
• DEBUG: Detailed debugging info

Production: Log ERROR and WARN only.

---

Monitoring Integrations

Third-party services:

Payments (Stripe):

• Failed payments alert
• Refund requests alert
• Subscription cancellations (daily digest)

Email (SendGrid):

• Delivery failures alert
• Bounce rate elevated alert
• Spam complaints alert

Database:

• Connection pool exhausted
• Slow queries (>1s)
• Disk space low

Tell AI:

Add monitoring for [service]:
- Alert on failures
- Track success rate
- Log errors with context

---

Incident Response

When alerts fire:

Incident Response:
1. Acknowledge alert (mark as seen)
2. Assess severity:
   - Critical: Site down, payments failing
   - High: Errors affecting many users
   - Medium: Isolated issues
3. Immediate action:
   - Critical: Hotfix or rollback
   - High: Fix within hours
   - Medium: Fix in next deploy
4. Update users if needed
5. Post-mortem after resolved

Critical incidents:

1. Assess impact (how many affected?)
2. Quick fix or rollback
3. Deploy hotfix
4. Verify fixed
5. Monitor closely for hour
6. Update status page if you have one

---

Success Looks Like

✅ Know about issues before users report them ✅ Uptime >99.9% ✅ Errors caught and fixed quickly ✅ Performance trends stable or improving ✅ Daily monitoring routine (5 minutes) ✅ Alerts configured and actionable ✅ Issues resolved proactively

---

Related Skills

• debug — Investigate and fix specific bugs
• deploy — Hosting setup and rollback procedures
• secure — Security monitoring and hardening
• analytics — User behavior tracking and conversion funnels
• go-live — Pre-launch readiness (includes monitoring as a checklist item)

Incident Response

How to respond when monitoring alerts fire.

---

Alert Severity Levels

Critical (Act Immediately)

Examples:

• Site completely down
• Payment processing failing
• Database unreachable
• All users can't log in

Response time: Drop everything, fix now

Actions: 1. Acknowledge alert 2. Check dashboard (confirm it's real) 3. Assess impact (how many users?) 4. Quick fix or rollback 5. Deploy hotfix 6. Monitor for 30 minutes 7. Post-mortem later

High (Act Within Hour)

Examples:

• Error rate spike (10x normal)
• API endpoint failing
• Some users can't log in
• Key feature broken

Response time: Within 1 hour

Actions: 1. Acknowledge alert 2. Assess scope (which users? which features?) 3. Investigate root cause 4. Plan fix 5. Deploy fix 6. Monitor for hour 7. Update users if needed

Medium (Act Within Day)

Examples:

• Slow performance (2x normal)
• Error rate elevated (2x normal)
• Non-critical feature broken
• Warning thresholds hit

Response time: Within 24 hours

Actions: 1. Note in issue tracker 2. Investigate when possible 3. Fix in next regular deploy 4. Monitor after deploy

Low (Act Eventually)

Examples:

• Minor performance degradation
• Low-frequency errors
• Edge case bugs
• Cosmetic issues

Response time: Next sprint/week

Actions: 1. Add to backlog 2. Fix when prioritized

---

Response Playbooks

Site Down

1. Check monitoring (confirmed down?)
2. Try accessing yourself (different network)
3. Check platform status page (Vercel/Netlify)
4. Check recent deploys (rollback option?)

If platform issue:
- Wait for platform recovery
- Update users via Twitter/status page

If your code:
- Rollback to last working deploy
- Investigate error logs
- Fix and redeploy
- Monitor closely

Timeline: Fix within 5-15 minutes

Error Rate Spike

1. Open error tracking (Sentry)
2. Identify most frequent error
3. Check when started
4. Check recent deploys
5. Note: New error or existing?

If new error:
- Recent deploy caused it
- Rollback if critical
- Fix root cause
- Redeploy

If existing error:
- What changed to make it spike?
- Increased traffic? New usage pattern?
- Fix underlying issue

Timeline: Fix within 1 hour

Performance Degradation

1. Check which part is slow (API? Frontend? Database?)
2. Check resource usage (CPU, memory, disk)
3. Check for traffic spike
4. Check recent changes

Quick fixes:
- Restart service
- Clear cache
- Add caching
- Scale up resources

Longer fixes:
- Optimize queries
- Add indexes
- Code optimization

Timeline: Quick fix within hour, optimize later

Payment Failing

CRITICAL - Act immediately

1. Check Stripe dashboard
2. Check error message
3. Test payment yourself
4. Check webhook logs

Common causes:
- Stripe API key wrong
- Webhook endpoint changed
- Code bug in payment flow
- Stripe service issue

Fix immediately:
- Restore working code
- Fix configuration
- Test payment works
- Monitor all payments for hour

Timeline: Fix within 15 minutes

Database Issues

1. Check database status (host dashboard)
2. Check connection pool
3. Check disk space
4. Check slow query log

Quick fixes:
- Restart database service
- Kill long-running queries
- Increase connection pool
- Clear old data

Critical:
- Database down: Contact host immediately
- Disk full: Delete logs/old data

Timeline: Fix within 30 minutes

---

Rollback Procedure

When to Rollback

Rollback if:

• Critical feature broken after deploy
• Error rate 10x higher
• Can't quickly identify fix
• Site unusable

Don't rollback if:

• Minor issue
• Know quick fix
• Only affects edge cases
• Can hotfix faster than rollback

How to Rollback

Vercel/Netlify:

1. Dashboard → Deployments
2. Find last working deployment
3. Click → Promote to Production
4. Confirm
5. Wait 1-2 minutes
6. Verify working

Duration: 2-3 minutes

Git-based deploy:

git revert HEAD
git push origin main
# Triggers redeploy

Or:
git reset --hard [last-working-commit]
git push --force origin main
# Dangerous, know what you're doing

Duration: 5-10 minutes

After rollback:

1. Verify site working
2. Investigate what broke
3. Fix in development
4. Test thoroughly
5. Redeploy

Don't rush redeploy - fix properly

---

Communication Templates

Internal (Team Slack)

Incident started:

🚨 INCIDENT: [Brief description]
Severity: [Critical/High/Medium]
Impact: [Who/what affected]
Status: Investigating
Owner: [Your name]

Updates: [This thread]

Incident update:

UPDATE: [What we learned]
Status: [Investigating/Fixing/Monitoring]
ETA: [When expect resolution]

Incident resolved:

✅ RESOLVED: [Brief description]
Duration: [Start to end time]
Root cause: [What happened]
Fix: [What we did]
Prevention: [What we'll do differently]

External (Users)

Status page update:

We're investigating reports of [issue].
- Started: [time]
- Impact: [which features]
- Status: Working on fix

Updates: [link to status page]

Resolution message:

Issue resolved. [Brief description] is now working normally.

What happened: [Simple explanation]
When: [Duration]
Affected: [Scope]

We apologize for the disruption.

Email to Affected Users

Subject: Service disruption resolved

Hi [Name],

You may have experienced [issue] between [start] and [end] today.

The issue has been resolved and everything is working normally now.

What happened: [Simple explanation]
What we did: [How we fixed it]
Preventing future issues: [What we're changing]

We apologize for any inconvenience.

[Your Name]

---

Post-Incident Review

After every major incident:

Incident Post-Mortem

Date: [When]
Duration: [How long]
Severity: [Critical/High]

What happened:
- [Timeline of events]
- [Root cause identified]
- [Why it happened]

Impact:
- Users affected: [Number/percentage]
- Features impacted: [Which]
- Duration: [How long]

Response:
- Detection: [How we found out]
- Time to fix: [How long]
- What went well: [Good things]
- What went poorly: [Bad things]

Prevention:
- [ ] [Action item 1]
- [ ] [Action item 2]
- [ ] [Action item 3]

Monitoring improvements:
- [ ] Add alert for [X]
- [ ] Monitor [Y] metric
- [ ] Test [Z] regularly

---

On-Call Checklist

If you're "on-call" (monitoring production):

Before your shift:
- [ ] Phone charged and notifications on
- [ ] Access to all dashboards
- [ ] Access to deployment tools
- [ ] Know how to rollback
- [ ] Know escalation contacts

During shift:
- [ ] Check dashboard morning and evening
- [ ] Phone with you always
- [ ] Respond to critical alerts within 15 min
- [ ] Log all incidents

After incident:
- [ ] Write post-mortem
- [ ] Identify prevention measures
- [ ] Update documentation
- [ ] Brief next on-call person

---

False Alarm Response

When alert fires but nothing wrong:

1. Acknowledge alert
2. Verify false alarm (check manually)
3. Document why false alarm
4. Adjust monitoring:
   - Threshold too sensitive?
   - Monitoring wrong metric?
   - Expected behavior not excluded?

Goal: Reduce false alarms to <5% of alerts

---

Escalation Procedures

When to Escalate

Escalate if:

• Can't fix within response time
• Don't understand root cause
• Need specialized expertise
• Security incident suspected
• Data corruption possible

Who to Escalate To

Level 1: You (founder)
- Initial response
- Simple fixes
- Rollbacks

Level 2: Technical co-founder / CTO
- Complex issues
- Architecture changes
- Security issues

Level 3: External expert
- Critical issues can't solve
- Security breaches
- Data recovery

Have contact info ready before needed

---

Weekend/Night Incidents

For non-critical issues:

Can it wait until Monday?
- YES: Note it, fix during business hours
- NO: Fix now

Remember: Most things can wait.
Don't burn out on minor issues.

Critical incidents (site down, payments failing):

Fix immediately, any time.
These are business-critical.

Set expectations with users:

Support hours: 9am-5pm PST
Emergency response: 24/7 for critical issues
Response time: <1 hour during business hours

Be clear what's "emergency"

---

Recovery Verification

After fixing incident:

Verification Checklist:
- [ ] Original issue resolved
- [ ] Error rate back to normal
- [ ] Performance back to baseline
- [ ] No new errors introduced
- [ ] Monitoring shows green
- [ ] Test main user flows
- [ ] Monitor for 30-60 minutes

Don't close incident until verified stable.

---

Learning from Incidents

Track patterns:

Common incidents:
- Same error keeps appearing → Fix root cause
- Same service keeps failing → Improve reliability
- Same user action breaks app → Better validation

After 3 similar incidents:
Stop treating as one-off.
Invest in permanent fix.

---

Quick Reference

Critical Incident (5-minute response):

1. Check monitoring (confirmed?)
2. Assess impact (how many users?)
3. Quick fix or rollback
4. Deploy
5. Monitor for 30 min
6. Post-mortem later

High Incident (1-hour response):

1. Acknowledge
2. Investigate root cause
3. Plan fix
4. Deploy fix
5. Monitor
6. Update users if needed

Medium Incident (24-hour response):

1. Note in tracker
2. Investigate when possible
3. Fix in next deploy
4. Monitor after deploy

Monitoring Setup Guide

Step-by-step setup for production monitoring.

---

Setup Priority

Start here (15 minutes): 1. Uptime monitoring 2. Error tracking 3. Basic alerts

Add later (optional): 4. Performance monitoring 5. Analytics 6. Advanced alerting

---

Uptime Monitoring Setup

UptimeRobot (Recommended)

1. Sign up:

• Go to uptimerobot.com
• Free account (50 monitors)

2. Add monitor:

Monitor Type: HTTPS
Friendly Name: YourApp Production
URL: https://yourapp.com
Monitoring Interval: 5 minutes (free tier)

3. Configure alerts:

Alert Contacts:
- Email: your@email.com
- SMS: your-phone (if offered)

Alert When:
- Down
- Seems down (slow to respond)

Don't alert:
- Planned maintenance (you can pause monitoring)

4. Test:

1. Monitoring starts immediately
2. Check dashboard shows "Up"
3. Pause monitor (test alert)
4. Should get email/SMS
5. Resume monitoring

Alternative: Pingdom

Similar setup:

• Limited free tier (10 checks)
• More detailed reporting
• Better for multiple sites

---

Error Tracking Setup

Sentry (Recommended)

1. Sign up:

• Go to sentry.io
• Free tier: 5,000 errors/month

2. Create project:

Platform: JavaScript (if React/Next.js)
Or: Node.js (if backend only)
Project name: yourapp-production

3. Get DSN:

Sentry provides DSN (Data Source Name)
Example: https://abc123@sentry.io/456789
Copy this

4. Tell AI to integrate:

Add Sentry error tracking:

DSN: [paste your DSN]

Capture:
- All JavaScript errors
- All unhandled promise rejections
- API errors (4xx, 5xx)
- Console errors

Include context:
- User ID (if logged in)
- Page URL
- Browser info
- User action that triggered error

Don't capture:
- Expected validation errors
- 404s on assets
- Passwords or sensitive data

5. Verify:

Tell AI:
"Add test error button (dev only) that throws error.
Let's verify Sentry catches it."

Click button → Error appears in Sentry dashboard

6. Configure alerts:

In Sentry dashboard:
Settings → Alerts

New Alert:
- When: New issue appears
- Send to: Your email
- Frequency: Immediately

Another alert:
- When: Issue happens 10+ times in 1 hour
- Send to: Your email/SMS
- Frequency: At most once per hour

---

Performance Monitoring

Vercel Analytics (if using Vercel)

Setup:

1. Vercel project → Analytics tab
2. Enable Web Analytics
3. Automatically tracks:
   - Page views
   - Web Vitals (performance)
   - Visitor data

Free tier: Included with Vercel

Cloudflare Analytics (any hosting)

Setup:

1. Site through Cloudflare (free)
2. Dashboard → Analytics
3. Automatic tracking:
   - Requests
   - Bandwidth
   - Threats blocked
   - Response times

Free tier: Basic analytics included

Google PageSpeed Insights

Manual checks:

1. Go to pagespeed.web.dev
2. Enter: https://yourapp.com
3. Run test
4. Check scores (aim for 90+)
5. Review suggestions

Not automatic - run weekly

---

Logging Setup

Platform Logs

Vercel:

Dashboard → Deployments → [Recent] → Logs
- Real-time logs
- Filter by level
- Search functionality

Netlify:

Dashboard → Functions → [Function] → Logs
- Function logs
- Build logs
- Deploy logs

Railway/Render:

Dashboard → Logs
- Application logs
- Build logs
- Live tail

Application Logging

Tell AI:

Add structured logging:

Format: JSON with fields:
- timestamp: ISO 8601
- level: ERROR, WARN, INFO
- message: Human readable
- context: {userId, action, etc}

Log:
- All errors with stack traces
- API requests (method, path, status, duration)
- Authentication events (login, logout, failed attempts)
- Slow operations (>1 second)

Don't log:
- Passwords
- Credit cards
- API keys
- Session tokens

Examples:
{
  "timestamp": "2025-01-13T10:30:45Z",
  "level": "ERROR",
  "message": "API request failed",
  "context": {
    "userId": "123",
    "endpoint": "/api/dashboard",
    "status": 500,
    "error": "Database timeout"
  }
}

---

Alert Configuration

Critical Alerts (Text/Call)

Set up for:

1. Site completely down (UptimeRobot)
2. Error rate spike (>10x normal in Sentry)
3. Payment processing failing (Stripe webhook)
4. Database connection lost

Delivery:
- SMS to phone
- PagerDuty (if team)
- Slack (urgent channel)

Frequency:
- Immediately
- Repeat every 15 min until acknowledged

Important Alerts (Email)

Set up for:

1. Error rate elevated (2x normal)
2. API response time slow (>2s)
3. Disk space warning (>80%)
4. Failed email deliveries
5. Failed payments

Delivery:
- Email to you
- Slack (if team)

Frequency:
- Within 1 hour
- Don't repeat unless worsens

Informational (Daily Digest)

Set up for:

1. Error summary (new error types)
2. Performance summary (trends)
3. Traffic summary (peak times)
4. User activity (new signups)

Delivery:
- Email digest
- Dashboard

Frequency:
- Once daily (morning)

---

Dashboard Setup

Single Dashboard View

Combine metrics:

Use Notion/Spreadsheet/Dashboard tool

Track daily:
- Uptime % (from UptimeRobot)
- Error count (from Sentry)
- Active users (from analytics)
- Response time (from platform)

5-minute daily check.

Recommended Layout

YourApp Production Health
Last updated: [Auto]

Status:
🟢 Uptime: 99.98% (24hr)
🟢 Errors: 12 (24hr)
🟢 Response: 245ms avg
🟢 Users: 145 active (24hr)

Recent Issues:
- None

Recent Deploys:
- 2025-01-13 09:30 - Feature X deployed

---

Monitoring for Key Features

Authentication

Monitor:

- Failed login attempts
- Account lockouts
- Password reset requests
- Successful logins

Alert when:
- Failed logins spike (potential attack)
- Password resets spike (potential breach)

Payments

Monitor:

- Successful payments
- Failed payments
- Refunds requested
- Subscription cancellations

Alert when:
- Payment success rate <95%
- Any failed payment (critical)

API Endpoints

Monitor:

- Response times per endpoint
- Error rates per endpoint
- Request volume per endpoint

Alert when:
- Any endpoint >2s response
- Any endpoint >5% error rate

---

Third-Party Monitoring

Stripe Monitoring

Setup webhook alerts:

Tell AI:
"Configure Stripe webhooks:
- charge.failed → Alert immediately
- payment_intent.payment_failed → Alert
- customer.subscription.deleted → Log

Send alerts to [email/slack]"

SendGrid Monitoring

Setup in SendGrid:

Alerts → Email Activity
Configure alerts for:
- Bounces >5% (daily)
- Spam reports >0.1% (daily)
- Blocks >1% (daily)

Database Monitoring

Tell AI:

Add database monitoring:
- Connection pool size (alert if >80%)
- Slow queries (log if >1s)
- Failed connections (alert immediately)
- Disk space (alert if >80%)

Report hourly stats to logs.

---

Testing Your Monitoring

Test Uptime Alerts

1. Pause UptimeRobot monitor
2. Wait 5 minutes
3. Should receive "Down" alert
4. Resume monitor
5. Should receive "Up" alert

If no alerts: Check alert contacts configured

Test Error Tracking

Tell AI:
"Add test endpoint: /api/test-error
Throws error when called (dev/staging only)
Remove before production."

1. Call endpoint
2. Check Sentry dashboard
3. Error should appear
4. Alert should fire (if configured)

If no error in Sentry: Check DSN configuration

Test Performance Monitoring

1. Open site in incognito
2. Check DevTools → Network
3. Record load time
4. Compare to monitoring dashboard
5. Should be similar

If different: Check monitoring integration

---

Monitoring Checklist

Before launch:

- [ ] Uptime monitoring configured
- [ ] Error tracking integrated
- [ ] Critical alerts set up (SMS/email)
- [ ] Logs capturing errors
- [ ] Test alerts working
- [ ] Dashboard accessible
- [ ] Know how to respond to alerts

After launch:

- [ ] Check monitoring daily
- [ ] Review weekly trends
- [ ] Adjust alerts (reduce noise)
- [ ] Add monitoring for new features

---

Monitoring Costs

Free tier sufficient for:

• < 1,000 users
• < 5,000 errors/month
• < 50 uptime checks
• Basic analytics

When to upgrade:

• Growing fast
• Need more detailed data
• Need faster alerts
• Need longer retention

Typical costs:

• Sentry Pro: $26/mo
• UptimeRobot Plus: $7/mo
• LogRocket: $99/mo (optional)

Total: ~$30-40/mo for serious monitoring

---

Quick Reference

15-Minute Monitoring Setup:

1. UptimeRobot account (5 min)
   - Add monitor
   - Configure email alert

2. Sentry account (5 min)
   - Create project
   - Get DSN
   
3. Tell AI to integrate (5 min)
   - Add Sentry to app
   - Test error capture
   
Done. You're now monitoring.