AWS CloudWatch & X-Ray Debug

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Analyze AWS CloudWatch and X-Ray telemetry to surface errors, latency issues, trace anomalies, and alarm violations.

Sby Skills Guide Bot
DevOpsIntermediate
7/22/2026
Claude Code
#aws-cloudwatch#observability#x-ray#incident-debugging#telemetry-analysis

Recommended for

Automated summary

Queries CloudWatch and X-Ray telemetry for a given AWS service and returns a structured diagnosis of errors, latency problems, trace anomalies, and firing alarms.

Strengths

  • Deduplicates and groups errors by type with frequency counts and a timeline
  • Correlates logs, metrics, alarms, and X-Ray traces through two dedicated MCPs in a single pass
  • Explicitly flags quality violations: error rate above 1%, SLA breaches, throughput degradation, and alarms stuck in ALARM
  • Produces a normalized output split into issues, traces, latency, alarms, anomalies, and performance with timestamps

Limitations

  • Relies on the CloudWatch and X-Ray MCPs being available along with the required AWS permissions
  • Assumes an identifiable AWS service and logs/traces already collected over the requested window
  • Mandatorily delegates to the zzaia-devops-specialist agent, with no fallback path
When to use it

Use it when an AWS service shows errors, slowdowns, or alarm activity and you need a correlated diagnosis over a specific time window.

When not to use it

Avoid it for code that is not deployed on AWS, for source-code review, or when you need non-AWS infrastructure metrics.

Security analysis

Safe
Quality score85/100

The skill is a read-only CloudWatch/X-Ray diagnostics wrapper: it retrieves and analyzes telemetry, with no destructive commands, credential exfiltration, obfuscated payloads, or safety-disabling instructions. It does rely on external MCP/agent access to potentially sensitive logs, but that is inherent to its stated debugging purpose.

No concerns found

How this analysis is made

Examples

Diagnostic par défaut sur 24 h
/capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name payment-service
Fenêtre élargie sur 48 h
/capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name api-gateway --time-range 48
Investigation ciblée sur les timeouts Lambda
/capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name lambda-processor --time-range 12 --description "Check for timeout issues"

name: capability:cloud-watch:debug description: Analyze AWS CloudWatch and X-Ray telemetry — surface errors, latency issues, trace anomalies, and alarm violations argument-hint: "--service-name <name> [--time-range <hours>] [--description <text>]" user-invocable: true agent: zzaia-devops-specialist metadata: parameters: - name: service-name description: AWS service name or log group to query required: true - name: time-range description: Time range in hours to analyze (default 24) required: false default: "24" - name: description description: Additional context or instructions required: false

PURPOSE

Retrieve and analyze AWS CloudWatch and X-Ray telemetry for a service. Surfaces errors, latency issues, trace anomalies, alarm violations, and quality problems. Returns structured diagnostic findings — not raw data.

EXECUTION

  1. Retrieve Telemetry — Call /capability:cloud-watch:query --service-name <service-name> --time-range <time-range>

    • CloudWatch logs and metrics
    • CloudWatch alarms and states
    • X-Ray traces and Application Signals
    • Trace segments and service nodes
  2. Analyze — Runtime Issues

    • Group errors by type and message; calculate frequency
    • Identify failed traces and root cause services
    • Flag alarms in ALARM or INSUFFICIENT_DATA states
    • Map occurrences to timeline
  3. Analyze — Quality Issues

    • Detect error rate exceeding acceptable threshold (> 1% of requests)
    • Flag SLA violations: trace latency above defined targets
    • Identify throughput degradation trends across the time range
    • Surface slow spans in traces and bottleneck services
    • Flag alarm violations and metric threshold breaches
  4. Return Findings — Structured diagnostic output with severity-tagged issues and quality violations

DELEGATION

MANDATORY: Always invoke the agents defined in this command's frontmatter for their designated responsibilities. Never skip, replace, or simulate their behavior directly.

  • zzaia-devops-specialist — Query CloudWatch and X-Ray MCPs and analyze diagnostic data

WORKFLOW

sequenceDiagram
    participant U as User
    participant C as Command
    participant A as DevOps Agent
    participant CW as CloudWatch MCP
    participant XR as X-Ray MCP

    U->>C: /capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name <service>
    C->>A: Dispatch with service filter and time range
    A->>CW: Query logs, metrics, alarms
    A->>XR: Query traces and Application Signals
    CW-->>A: CloudWatch data
    XR-->>A: X-Ray data
    A->>A: Group errors, analyze traces, identify slow spans, flag alarms
    A-->>C: Structured diagnostic findings
    C-->>U: Issues, latency problems, anomalies, alarm violations

ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA

  • Telemetry retrieved for the specified time range from both MCPs
  • Errors deduplicated and grouped by type with frequency
  • Failed traces identified with root cause services
  • Alarms in ALARM state flagged with severity
  • Slow spans and latency issues identified in traces
  • Quality violations identified: error rate, SLA breaches, throughput degradation, alarm violations
  • Timestamps included for all critical events

EXAMPLES

/capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name payment-service
/capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name api-gateway --time-range 48
/capability:cloud-watch:debug --service-name lambda-processor --time-range 12 --description "Check for timeout issues"

OUTPUT

  • Issues: Error types, frequency, affected services
  • Traces: Failed traces with root cause analysis
  • Latency: Slow spans, bottleneck services, SLA violations
  • Alarms: Active alarms with threshold and state
  • Anomalies: Detected trace anomalies and deviations
  • Performance: Request latency, throughput, error rate trends
  • Quality Violations: Error rate threshold breaches, SLA violations, throughput degradation, alarm violations
  • Timeline: Chronological summary of key events

From the file to a first result

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Read .skill-downloads/aws-cloudwatch-x-ray-debug-mrwakevw/SKILL.md and apply its instructions to this example: [describe a test input]. Identify any missing files, dependencies or access. Produce the result requested by the skill without inventing data or running unreviewed scripts.

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