axiomhq/skills
Overview
This skill runs metrics queries against Axiom MetricsDB using included shell scripts. It helps you discover available metrics, tags, and tag values, then compose and execute OpenTelemetry-compatible metrics queries. Use the scripts to explore datasets, fetch the query specification, and run time-bounded metrics queries reliably.
How this skill works
Scripts live in the skill folder and must be invoked with their relative paths (e.g., scripts/metrics-query). Start with scripts/metrics-spec to retrieve the full metrics query specification, then use scripts/metrics-info to list datasets, metrics, tags, and tag values. Compose a metrics query (APL) and execute it with scripts/metrics-query providing explicit RFC3339 start and end timestamps.
When to use it
- Exploring available OTel metrics, tags, and tag values before writing queries
- Running production or ad-hoc time-bounded metrics queries against Axiom
- Validating metric names, tag combinations, or tag values for troubleshooting
- Checking aggregated metrics (align, rate, avg, etc.) over a fixed interval
- Investigating backend errors and collecting trace IDs when a 500 occurs
Best practices
- Always run scripts/metrics-spec <deployment> first to learn query syntax and operators
- Use scripts/metrics-info to discover metrics and tag values before composing queries
- Provide explicit RFC3339 start and end times; relative times like now-1h are not supported
- Run scripts/setup to verify curl, jq, and a valid ~/.axiom.toml before querying
- On HTTP 500 errors, re-run with verbose curl to capture traceparent or x-axiom-trace-id
Example use cases
- Find all metrics referencing a service name: scripts/metrics-info prod my-dataset find-metrics "frontend"
- List all tags and their values for a dataset to design filters
- Query average request latency: scripts/metrics-query prod 'my-dataset:http.server.duration | align to 5m using avg' '2025-06-01T00:00:00Z' '2025-06-02T00:00:00Z'
- Inspect tag values for a specific metric to narrow down groupings and filters
- Run low-level requests with scripts/axiom-api for custom endpoints or debugging
FAQ
Ensure curl and jq are installed and ~/.axiom.toml contains a deployment entry with url, token, and org_id.
Can I use relative time expressions like now-1h?
No. Start and end must be RFC3339 timestamps; relative expressions are not supported.
5 skills
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