Prometheus Configuration

---
name: prometheus-configuration
description: Set up Prometheus for comprehensive metric collection, storage, and monitoring of infrastructure and applications. Use when implementing metrics collection, setting up monitoring infrastructure, or configuring alerting systems.
---

# Prometheus Configuration

Complete guide to Prometheus setup, metric collection, scrape configuration, and recording rules.

## Purpose

Configure Prometheus for comprehensive metric collection, alerting, and monitoring of infrastructure and applications.

## When to Use

- Set up Prometheus monitoring
- Configure metric scraping
- Create recording rules
- Design alert rules
- Implement service discovery

## Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in `references/details.md`. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

## Best Practices

1. **Use consistent naming** for metrics (prefix_name_unit)
2. **Set appropriate scrape intervals** (15-60s typical)
3. **Use recording rules** for expensive queries
4. **Implement high availability** (multiple Prometheus instances)
5. **Configure retention** based on storage capacity
6. **Use relabeling** for metric cleanup
7. **Monitor Prometheus itself**
8. **Implement federation** for large deployments
9. **Use Thanos/Cortex** for long-term storage
10. **Document custom metrics**

## Troubleshooting

**Check scrape targets:**

```bash
curl http://localhost:9090/api/v1/targets
```

**Check configuration:**

```bash
curl http://localhost:9090/api/v1/status/config
```

**Test query:**

```bash
curl 'http://localhost:9090/api/v1/query?query=up'
```


## Related Skills

- `grafana-dashboards` - For visualization
- `slo-implementation` - For SLO monitoring
- `distributed-tracing` - For request tracing

Run this skill on a real model without leaving the page. Every run is saved to your history for this skill.

How to use

1. 1Save the content below as SKILL.md in your agent's skills directory (e.g. .claude/skills/<name>/SKILL.md).
2. 2Or paste it directly into the conversation as context before asking the agent to do the task.
3. 3Adjust any project-specific paths or conventions mentioned in the skill to match your setup.