Monitor: $ARGUMENTS
Spot-check application health, audit observability completeness, and file build-ready tickets for the problems and instrumentation gaps it finds — all scoped to the current repo. Useful reactively (after a deploy, after a Sentry alert, before pushing a hot change), as a periodic manual observability sweep, and as the post-deploy verification step inside lisa-verify.
Arguments: <environment> (dev / staging / prod) [--dry-run] [--report-only] [--all-gaps] [max_candidates=<n>].
--dry-run— audit and report which tickets would be filed, but create nothing.--report-only— health/audit summary only; no filing and no would-file analysis. This is the modelisa-verifypasses for its post-deploy check, so monitor never files during a verify run.--all-gaps— also filerecommended-tier gaps (session replay, product analytics, etc.), not justcore. Does not change anomaly thresholds.max_candidates=<n>— cap tickets filed this run (default 20; configmonitor.maxCandidates).
Deprecated monitor threshold aliases
Before resolving anomaly thresholds, inspect the committed
.lisa.config.json and local .lisa.config.local.json separately with jq.
Use a literal, fixed-path projection that returns presence and value for only
these four exact paths; do not use Read, cat, interpolation, or a filter
that emits either entire config into agent context:
monitor.thresholds.minEvents24h, thenmonitor.thresholds.sentryMinEvents24h.monitor.thresholds.faultRatePct, thenmonitor.thresholds.xrayFaultRatePct.
The provider-neutral keys are the current contract. The legacy provider-prefixed keys are deprecated compatibility aliases and are used only when the matching provider-neutral key is absent.
Run this fixed filter once with literal final argument .lisa.config.json and
once with literal final argument .lisa.config.local.json when the respective
file exists:
jq 'def threshold($object; $name):
if ($object | has($name)) then
($object[$name] | type) as $type |
if $type == "number" then
if ($object[$name] | isfinite and (isnan | not)) then
{present: true, valid: true, type: "number", value: $object[$name]}
else
{present: true, valid: false, type: "non-finite-number"}
end
else
{present: true, valid: false, type: $type}
end
else
{present: false, valid: false, type: "missing"}
end;
(.monitor.thresholds | if type == "object" then . else {} end) as $t |
{
"monitor.thresholds.minEvents24h": threshold($t; "minEvents24h"),
"monitor.thresholds.sentryMinEvents24h": threshold($t; "sentryMinEvents24h"),
"monitor.thresholds.faultRatePct": threshold($t; "faultRatePct"),
"monitor.thresholds.xrayFaultRatePct": threshold($t; "xrayFaultRatePct")
}' .lisa.config.json
A nonzero jq result fails threshold collection; do not treat an uninspectable
present file as if it were absent.
For each exact path, keep the raw jq presence/value result from each file;
do not inject defaults during this merge. Local presence overrides committed
presence per path. After that merge, resolve the current key before the legacy
key, then use default 1 for monitor.thresholds.minEvents24h or default 5
for monitor.thresholds.faultRatePct. Current key wins over legacy key even
when its configured value is invalid.
Every configured threshold must be a finite JSON number. If the selected path
is null, a string, a boolean, an object, an array, or otherwise non-finite,
fail threshold collection and report the exact path and source without echoing
the invalid value; never fall through to a legacy value or default. Never quote
or report either whole config. The fixed jq projection itself must redact
invalid configured content: it emits only presence, validity, and a fixed type
classification, and includes the numeric value field only for a finite number.
For a valid resolution, the monitor report must include the resolved value and
source. Report only a validated numeric resolved value and one fixed source enum:
local-current, committed-current, local-legacy, committed-legacy, or
default.
Orchestration: agent team
You are "inside an agent team" only if you are yourself a spawned teammate or subagent — you were spawned into a team context, or your context names a team lead you report to. A lead/root session that has previously spawned subagents is still the lead and retains full authority to create this flow's team.
If you are NOT inside an agent team by that definition, the very first thing you do is establish team orchestration.
Use the team tool for the current runtime:
- Claude Code >= 2.1.178: there is no
TeamCreatetool; the team forms automatically when you spawn the first teammate withAgent. That first spawn should be the bounded specialist needed to start this flow. On older Claude Code that still exposesTeamCreate, the explicit team-create path is also acceptable. - Codex: do not call
TeamCreate; Codex does not expose that Claude tool. Usetool_searchwith a query likemulti-agent toolsto loadmulti_agent_v1, then usemulti_agent_v1.spawn_agentfor teammate delegation. Treat the first successfulspawn_agentcall as establishing team orchestration. - Other runtimes: use the current runtime's tool-discovery mechanism to discover and call the appropriate multi-agent/team tool.
If no team creation or subagent delegation tool is available, explicitly state that team orchestration is unavailable in this runtime, continue as the lead agent, and preserve the workflow's review, verification, and task-tracking obligations locally.
Until the team is established, the first Codex teammate has been spawned, or the no-team fallback has been declared, do NOT call any of: TaskCreate, Skill, MCP tools (Atlassian / Linear / GitHub / Notion / Sentry), Read, Write, Edit, Bash, Grep, Glob. The initial Claude Agent spawn described above is the only pre-team exception because it establishes the team. Hitting health endpoints, pulling logs, querying Sentry — all of those are tasks for the team you are about to create, not for the lead session before orchestration exists.
If you ARE already inside an agent team (e.g., a teammate invoked this skill via the Skill tool), do NOT create a second team — many harnesses reject double-creates — and do NOT collapse the nested flow into a single inline worker. A nested team-first flow must still bring in the specialists it requires by adding them to the existing team, not by doing the work itself:
- Claude: teams are flat and only the lead can add named teammates, so do NOT call
Agentwith anamefrom a teammate (the harness rejects it: "Teammates cannot spawn other teammates — the team roster is flat"). Send the team lead a message naming the specialist teammate(s) this flow needs, their task assignments, and completion criteria, then coordinate through the shared task list until they finish. An anonymous subagent (Agentwithnameomitted) is permitted only for bounded one-shot work whose result returns directly to you — it is not a substitute for the required lifecycle specialists. - Codex: do NOT call
TeamCreate. If the lead/root agent is addressable (you were given its id/handle), send it a request tomulti_agent_v1.spawn_agentthe specialist agent(s), including each agent's prompt, ownership, and expected result. If no lead handle exists butspawn_agentis available to you, spawn only the bounded specialist agent(s) this flow needs,wait_agentfor their results, and relay those results upward to the parent/lead.
Treat the first successful lead-spawn request (or, on the Codex fallback, the first specialist spawn) as preserving team orchestration. Never satisfy a team-first lifecycle flow by doing all the work inline.
Flow
Execute the Monitor sub-flow as defined in the intent-routing rule (loaded via the lisa plugin): discover → collect live signals → audit completeness → report → file (standalone only). The observability-audit rule owns the profile detection, the completeness rubric, the conservative anomaly thresholds, the gate-passing ticket templates, the fingerprint/idempotency contract, the cap, and the Verify report-only guard — follow it; do not restate it here.
Live-signal collection delegates to a stack-specific ops-specialist agent when the stack overlay ships one. The Expo ops-specialist composes the full set below:
ops-verify-health— health endpointsops-check-logs— CloudWatch / browser console / device / Serverless logsops-monitor-errors— Sentry issues, error-rate spikes, regressionsops-performance— slow queries, p99 latency, hotspotsops-browser-uat— Playwright smoke flows against the deployed envops-db-ops— pending migrations, replication lagops-deploy— deploy status / rollback readiness
The Rails ops-specialist composes a different subset (ops-run-local, ops-deploy, ops-check-logs, ops-verify-jobs, ops-verify-telemetry — X-Ray/CloudWatch traces and metrics via ops-verify-telemetry). When no ops-specialist overlay is present (e.g. NestJS, CDK, or a generic TypeScript repo), fall back to stack-agnostic base probing — read manifests/config to discover what's wired, then probe live sources directly (Sentry CLI/REST, aws logs / aws cloudwatch / aws xray, the Playwright MCP for client-side console/network), exactly as the observability-audit "read-then-probe" detection prescribes. The agent decides which subset to run based on the env, the repo profile, and any extra context.
For a configured non-production DOM environment with mutation policy full, ops-browser-uat or the stack-agnostic fallback may invoke lisa-kane-browser after lisa kane probe succeeds. Use the normalized outcome and local evidence pack; a Kane tool/auth/upload/schema failure is PRESENT (unverified) or a tooling warning, never an application anomaly. Under --report-only, Kane remains report-only too and cannot file tickets directly.
Ticket filing (standalone only)
After report, file what was found — only when run standalone, never under --report-only/--dry-run and never when nested inside lisa-verify (which passes --report-only):
- Anomalies (live signals over the conservative bar) →
Bugleaves. Gaps (in-scope MISSING rubric dimensions) →Task/Improvementleaves. - Every ticket is filed via the vendor-neutral
lisa-tracker-writeshim withbuild_ready: true(never a vendor write skill directly), as a single-repo leaf stampedrepo:<current>, with a real three-audience description, Gherkin AC, Target Backend Environment, and a Validation Journey + typed[EVIDENCE: <artifact-type>: <name>]marker (e.g.[EVIDENCE: log-snippet: alert-cleared]) so it passes thetracker-validategates. - Operator footer (required): every filed ticket ends with the
rejection-detectionoperator footer as a visible prose line —To stop this from being raised again, close it as **Not planned**. Close it as **Completed** if it was fixed — a later recurrence may be re-filed as a regression.— so the operator knows which close-reason silences the finding. - Idempotent + decline-aware: embed the
<!-- lisa:monitor-finding: <fingerprint> -->sentinel and follow theobservability-auditrule's current fingerprint/idempotency contract for open-and-closed search, prior-decline suppression, recurrence evidence, completed-item regression handling, and tracker-read failure outcomes. Never duplicate a live or just-resolved finding. - Capped at
max_candidates(default 20),core/high-severity first; report how many were filed vs dropped. --dry-runpreviews would-file tickets and creates nothing.--all-gapswidens gap filing torecommendedtiers.
monitor files only. The intake / tracker-build-intake cron picks the ready tickets up and implements them.
Output
A single report: the health/anomaly summary (failures, warnings, no-issue confirmations) + the observability audit table (each in-scope dimension as OK / WARN / MISSING / PRESENT (unverified)) + the filing summary (tickets filed with refs + fingerprints, duplicates skipped, dropped count if the cap truncated; or would-file tickets under --dry-run). For post-deploy verification (when called from lisa-verify), the report-only summary becomes evidence on the originating work item.
Run outcome
As the registered monitor automation loop, the standalone cron run conforms to the
automation-runbook-contract rule: it ends in exactly one of the six run outcomes and records it,
so a quiet monitoring run and a broken one never look identical.
| This cycle's exit path | Run outcome |
|---|---|
Anomalies or in-scope gaps filed — one or more Bug / Task / Improvement leaves created or referenced |
candidate-proposed |
Clean sweep — health/audit ran end to end, nothing over the bar and no in-scope gaps — or every finding was suppressed by a prior decline (rejection-detection Proposal rejection memory): the summary MUST name the suppression count |
nothing-needed |
Provider/threshold resolution failure — threshold collection fails (a present-but-uninspectable config, an invalid configured threshold) or a signal provider is unreachable so the sweep could not run — or the open-and-closed rejection-memory search could not read the tracker: a memory check that could not run is a broken loop, never a silent nothing-needed |
recovery-required |
The runbook's Retirement condition tripped — the trailing quiet window is empty AND this sweep found nothing AND no connected observability surfaces are left — this row supersedes the nothing-needed row when it applies |
policy-obsolete |
A degradation that still let the sweep run (an optional ops-specialist overlay absent, Kane unavailable) |
the outcome it actually reached above, with the summary leading with the degradation — degradation never mints a seventh token |
Only the standalone run records. The nested report-only modes do their own job and do not file or
record: --report-only (including the lisa-verify post-deploy call, whose summary is evidence on
the originating item) and --dry-run (a preview that creates nothing) are not registered-loop
invocations.
Before invoking the run-record CLI, evaluate the Retirement condition first. If it applies,
select policy-obsolete as the sole outcome and do not record a prior nothing-needed result;
otherwise select the ordinary outcome from the table.
Record exactly one outcome per standalone invocation through the run-record CLI, naming this
loop's runbook (the --summary is the operator-readable one-liner in the contract's exemplar voice —
plain, specific, actionable, e.g. Health green; audit clean — nothing to propose. for
nothing-needed; and for a recovery-required from an unreadable decline check, Tracker unreachable during the decline check — restore credentials; nothing was filed this run.):
node "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT:-node_modules/@codyswann/lisa/plugins/lisa}/scripts/automation-run-record.mjs" \
--loop-id monitor --outcome candidate-proposed \
--summary "Filed #1810 for the p99 latency spike; awaiting your flip to ready." \
--runbook .lisa/automations/monitor.runbook.md [--ref <ticket-url>]...
The :- default in that command is load-bearing, not decoration. CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT is not
exported into an agent's Bash tool environment, so the bare "${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/scripts/…"
form expands to an absolute /scripts/… and exits 1. The default names the installed package copy,
which resolves from the consumer repository root — which is where the recorder is actually
invoked. Never substitute a bare plugins/lisa/scripts/… or plugins/src/base/scripts/… path:
those are relative to the Lisa package root, not the repository you are standing in, and exit 1
from there. If recording still fails, degrade, never abort (per automation-runbook-contract):
note the recording failure in the run output and finish the cycle — a recording failure is a
degradation to report, never a reason to block the loop.
Retirement evaluation (every run). Evaluate this loop's runbook Retirement condition on
every standalone run, exactly as the automation-runbook-contract rule's Retirement section defines
it — this skill conforms to that text and never restates or diverges from it. On top of the
contract's two conditions the runbook seeds a third domain conjunct — the project has no
connected observability surfaces left, so there is nothing to monitor — which only tightens the test
and never replaces it: a quiet month on a healthy project is good news, not a reason to stop
watching it. Evaluate all three. When all three hold, record policy-obsolete and file
exactly ONE marker-deduped teardown proposal through lisa-tracker-write
(per tracked-work + integration-access-layer):
- Marker
<!-- [lisa-automation-retire] key=monitor -->plus a visible prose line; matched on the marker, never the title; searched open AND closed perrejection-detection's Proposal rejection memory. Treat matches by close state: open suppresses another proposal; Not planned suppresses another proposal unless new evidence postdates the rejection; Completed means the prior approved action happened, so a later recurrence may be re-filed. When an existing proposal suppresses filing, the run still recordspolicy-obsoleteand files nothing — the outcome describes this run, while the ticket is filed exactly once. - Labels
status:blocked+human-needed, carrying the contract's decision-ready packet. Thehuman-neededlabel marks the proposal human-owned:lisa-repair-intakerecognizes it and never re-dispatches it as stalled work. - Evidence the date-filtered search result, this run's summary, the loop's current cadence
(the baseline an operator needs to choose a longer one), and a one-line summary of recent runs
read from
.lisa/automations/runs/monitor.jsonl. Fill the rest of the packet the same way every time: Work already attempted is the searches this run ran, and Risk of inaction is that the loop keeps consuming schedule slots and tokens for nothing. - How to answer names the three operator responses: approve — run
/lisa:tear-down-automations monitorand only that loop registration goes away; decline — close the proposal as Not planned (closing it as Completed leaves a later re-file open) and the loop simply continues; re-cadence — pick a longer cadence off that evidence and re-register with/lisa:setup-automationsinstead of tearing down. - Operator footer, verbatim, as on every loop-filed proposal (
rejection-detection):To stop this from being raised again, close it as Not planned. Close it as Completed if it was fixed — a later recurrence may be re-filed as a regression.
The loop keeps running at its normal cadence until a human acts, and never deletes its own registration.