slo-implementation - Agent Skills

SLO Implementation

Framework for defining and implementing Service Level Indicators (SLIs), Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and error budgets.

Do not use this skill when

The task is unrelated to slo implementation

You need a different domain or tool outside this scope

Instructions

Clarify goals, constraints, and required inputs.

Apply relevant best practices and validate outcomes.

Provide actionable steps and verification.

If detailed examples are required, open resources/implementation-playbook.md.

Purpose

Implement measurable reliability targets using SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets to balance reliability with innovation velocity.

Use this skill when

Define service reliability targets

Measure user-perceived reliability

Implement error budgets

Create SLO-based alerts

Track reliability goals

SLI/SLO/SLA Hierarchy

SLA (Service Level Agreement)
  ↓ Contract with customers
SLO (Service Level Objective)
  ↓ Internal reliability target
SLI (Service Level Indicator)
  ↓ Actual measurement

Defining SLIs

Common SLI Types

1. Availability SLI

# Successful requests / Total requests
sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[28d]))
/
sum(rate(http_requests_total[28d]))

2. Latency SLI

# Requests below latency threshold / Total requests
sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le="0.5"}[28d]))
/
sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_count[28d]))

3. Durability SLI

# Successful writes / Total writes
sum(storage_writes_successful_total)
/
sum(storage_writes_total)

Reference: See references/slo-definitions.md

Setting SLO Targets

Availability SLO Examples

SLO %	Downtime/Month	Downtime/Year
99%	7.2 hours	3.65 days
99.9%	43.2 minutes	8.76 hours
99.95%	21.6 minutes	4.38 hours
99.99%	4.32 minutes	52.56 minutes

Choose Appropriate SLOs

Consider:

User expectations

Business requirements

Current performance

Cost of reliability

Competitor benchmarks

Example SLOs:

slos:
  - name: api_availability
    target: 99.9
    window: 28d
    sli: |
      sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[28d]))
      /
      sum(rate(http_requests_total[28d]))  - name: api_latency_p95
    target: 99
    window: 28d
    sli: |
      sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le="0.5"}[28d]))
      /
      sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_count[28d]))

Error Budget Calculation

Error Budget Formula

Error Budget = 1 - SLO Target

Example:

SLO: 99.9% availability

Error Budget: 0.1% = 43.2 minutes/month

Current Error: 0.05% = 21.6 minutes/month

Remaining Budget: 50%

Error Budget Policy

error_budget_policy:
  - remaining_budget: 100%
    action: Normal development velocity
  - remaining_budget: 50%
    action: Consider postponing risky changes
  - remaining_budget: 10%
    action: Freeze non-critical changes
  - remaining_budget: 0%
    action: Feature freeze, focus on reliability

Reference: See references/error-budget.md

SLO Implementation

Prometheus Recording Rules

# SLI Recording Rules
groups:
  - name: sli_rules
    interval: 30s
    rules:
      # Availability SLI
      - record: sli:http_availability:ratio
        expr: |
          sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[28d]))
          /
          sum(rate(http_requests_total[28d]))
      # Latency SLI (requests < 500ms)
      - record: sli:http_latency:ratio
        expr: |
          sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_bucket{le="0.5"}[28d]))
          /
          sum(rate(http_request_duration_seconds_count[28d]))
  - name: slo_rules
    interval: 5m
    rules:
      # SLO compliance (1 = meeting SLO, 0 = violating)
      - record: slo:http_availability:compliance
        expr: sli:http_availability:ratio >= bool 0.999
      - record: slo:http_latency:compliance
        expr: sli:http_latency:ratio >= bool 0.99
      # Error budget remaining (percentage)
      - record: slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining
        expr: |
          (sli:http_availability:ratio - 0.999) / (1 - 0.999)  100      # Error budget burn rate
      - record: slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m
        expr: |
          (1 - (
            sum(rate(http_requests_total{status!~"5.."}[5m]))
            /
            sum(rate(http_requests_total[5m]))
          )) / (1 - 0.999)

SLO Alerting Rules

groups:
  - name: slo_alerts
    interval: 1m
    rules:
      # Fast burn: 14.4x rate, 1 hour window
      # Consumes 2% error budget in 1 hour
      - alert: SLOErrorBudgetBurnFast
        expr: |
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_1h > 14.4
          and
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m > 14.4
        for: 2m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "Fast error budget burn detected"
          description: "Error budget burning at {{ $value }}x rate"
      # Slow burn: 6x rate, 6 hour window
      # Consumes 5% error budget in 6 hours
      - alert: SLOErrorBudgetBurnSlow
        expr: |
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_6h > 6
          and
          slo:http_availability:burn_rate_30m > 6
        for: 15m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Slow error budget burn detected"
          description: "Error budget burning at {{ $value }}x rate"      # Error budget exhausted
      - alert: SLOErrorBudgetExhausted
        expr: slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining < 0
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "SLO error budget exhausted"
          description: "Error budget remaining: {{ $value }}%"

SLO Dashboard

Grafana Dashboard Structure:

┌────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SLO Compliance (Current)           │
│ ✓ 99.95% (Target: 99.9%)          │
├────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Error Budget Remaining: 65%        │
│ ████████░░ 65%                     │
├────────────────────────────────────┤
│ SLI Trend (28 days)                │
│ [Time series graph]                │
├────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Burn Rate Analysis                 │
│ [Burn rate by time window]         │
└────────────────────────────────────┘

Example Queries:

# Current SLO compliance
sli:http_availability:ratio  100
Error budget remaining

slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining
Days until error budget exhausted (at current burn rate)

(slo:http_availability:error_budget_remaining / 100)

28
/
(1 - sli:http_availability:ratio)  (1 - 0.999)

Multi-Window Burn Rate Alerts

# Combination of short and long windows reduces false positives
rules:
  - alert: SLOBurnRateHigh
    expr: |
      (
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_1h > 14.4
        and
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_5m > 14.4
      )
      or
      (
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_6h > 6
        and
        slo:http_availability:burn_rate_30m > 6
      )
    labels:
      severity: critical

SLO Review Process

Weekly Review

Current SLO compliance

Error budget status

Trend analysis

Incident impact

Monthly Review

SLO achievement

Error budget usage

Incident postmortems

SLO adjustments

Quarterly Review

SLO relevance

Target adjustments

Process improvements

Tooling enhancements

Best Practices

Start with user-facing services

Use multiple SLIs (availability, latency, etc.)

Set achievable SLOs (don't aim for 100%)

Implement multi-window alerts to reduce noise

Track error budget consistently

Review SLOs regularly

Document SLO decisions

Align with business goals

Automate SLO reporting

Use SLOs for prioritization

Reference Files

assets/slo-template.md - SLO definition template

references/slo-definitions.md - SLO definition patterns

references/error-budget.md - Error budget calculations

Related Skills

prometheus-configuration - For metric collection

grafana-dashboards - For SLO visualization