🏗️ Architecture: How to build observability/telemetry for Vitto without addin...

Date: 2026-03-18
Time: 00:15:34 UTC
Session: gspace1-231.7
Agent: backend
Confidence: 93%
Status: ✅ Documented

📋 Decision Context

Question:

How to build observability/telemetry for Vitto without adding external dependencies like Grafana Cloud or Jaeger?

Task: S231.2 — In-app observability system (alternative to GAP-08 OTEL)

🎯 Decision Made

Chosen:

Built in-app observability system using existing execution-traces MongoDB collection. VittoObservabilityService with 5 parallel aggregation pipelines (task count, success rate, avg/p95 latency, cost, provider breakdown). ObservabilityController at /vitto-api/observability/ with 4 endpoints. PerfAlertService with 15-min cron dispatching anomaly alerts to role>=60 users via ProactiveDispatcherService. Extended DailyDigestService with performance section. Frontend VittoTracesComponent with GoGrab glassmorphism design.

Options Considered:

1. Grafana Cloud free tier (rejected: external dependency, user preference)
2. Self-hosted Jaeger on Railway (rejected: another service to manage)
3. Console/log OTEL exporter (rejected: no dashboard, limited value)
4. In-app observability from existing data (chosen: zero infra, uses existing traces)

💭 Reasoning

User explicitly requested no external dependencies. execution-traces collection was ALREADY populated by MindService.recordExecution() after every task — zero write amplification needed. taskId flows through the entire system as a natural correlation key, replacing the need for W3C trace context headers. Data was verified to exist in vitto-mind (same cluster as all Vitto data — vitto.urgh5aw). gograb-analytics was rejected because it lives on a different cluster (gograbspace), requiring cross-cluster queries. This approach covers ~80% of what OTEL would provide. The remaining 20% (cross-service trace propagation) is over-engineering for 4 backends sharing taskId.

📁 Files Involved

• APIs/backend-vitto-api/src/app/mind/vitto-observability.service.ts
• APIs/backend-vitto-api/src/app/mind/observability.controller.ts
• APIs/backend-vitto-api/src/app/proactive/perf-alert.service.ts
• APIs/backend-vitto-api/src/app/proactive/daily-digest.service.ts
• libs/libs-ai/gograb-ai-lib/src/lib/components/vitto-traces/

🔗 Related

• Decision ID: dev_1773792934431_klhtv8v
• Session: 231
• Workspace: gspace1

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