---
title: "Operations tools · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools
updated: 2026-10-21
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Operations tools

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers). Updated 2026-10-21.

For AI agents: [llms.txt](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) is a short guide that sends you to the rules your problem needs, and [rules.json](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/rules.json) holds every rule of this playbook as JSON.

> The tools we pick to watch a live app. Traces, metrics, dashboards, logs, errors, uptime checks, paging and Postgres backups.

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools">Agent Wranglers software choices playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

## Recommended

- [Use OpenTelemetry to instrument your code](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/opentelemetry): Add traces, metrics and log context to your code with the OpenTelemetry API and SDK, and send them over OTLP to any backend.
- [Use Prometheus for metrics](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/prometheus): Store and query numeric metrics with Prometheus, and alert on them with its rules and Alertmanager.
- [Use Grafana for dashboards](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/grafana): Build dashboards in Grafana, with each dashboard saved as JSON in the repository.
- [Use JSON logs and Loki to store them](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/json-logs-and-loki): Write one JSON object per log line to standard output, and ship the lines to Loki or another store that searches by label.
- [Use GlitchTip for error tracking](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/glitchtip): Send every unhandled server and browser error to GlitchTip through the Sentry SDKs, tagged with the release. Fix new errors before the next deploy.
- [Use Uptime Kuma on another provider for uptime checks](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/uptime-kuma): Check your public addresses from outside with Uptime Kuma, run at a different provider from the app.
- [Use PagerDuty for paging and keep schedules as code](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/pagerduty): Page people through PagerDuty, and keep its schedules, escalation policies and services in Terraform in your repository.
- [Use pg_dump and pgBackRest for Postgres backups](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/postgres-backups): Take a nightly `pg_dump` of every Postgres database, and add pgBackRest for point-in-time recovery once losing a day of data costs too much.

## Optional

- [Use Sentry only for features GlitchTip lacks](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/sentry): Move from GlitchTip to Sentry only when you need a Sentry feature GlitchTip lacks, and name that feature in a decision record.

## Avoid

- [Avoid paging tools that are shutting down](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/ending-paging-tools): Do not start on Opsgenie or the open source Grafana OnCall, and move off them before they stop.

- Previous: [Delivery and infrastructure](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/delivery-and-infrastructure)
- Next: [Product services](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/product-services)
- [All chapters](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack)