dd-monitors

Datadog Monitors

Create, manage, and maintain monitors for alerting. Use this skill for routine monitor CRUD and design best practices; use the monitoring-alerting agent for downtime workflows.

Prerequisites

This requires the pup binary in your path.

pup - cargo install --git https://github.com/DataDog/pup

Quick Start

pup auth login

List Monitors

pup monitors list
pup monitors list --tags "team:platform"
pup monitors search --query "status:Alert"

Get Monitor

pup monitors get <id>

Create Monitor

pup monitors create --file monitor.json

Mute/Unmute

# Mute with duration
pup monitors update 12345 --file monitor-muted.json

# Or mute with specific end time
pup monitors update 12345 --file monitor-muted-until.json

# Unmute
pup monitors update 12345 --file monitor-unmuted.json

1. Avoid Alert Fatigue

# 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 window

2. 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
"""

Delete Monitors Safely

Monitor deletion is destructive and the CLI deletes immediately without prompting. Only run pup monitors delete <monitor-id> after the user explicitly requests deletion and confirms the exact monitor. Do not rename a monitor as a substitute for deletion.

pup monitors delete 12345

Monitor Types

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

# Downtime (preferred)
pup downtime create --file downtime.json

Failure Handling

References

• Monitor Types
• Alerting Best Practices
• SLO Monitors