Docs · Operate

Core concepts

Watchpost keeps a small operational vocabulary so measurements, evidence, decisions, and actions do not collapse into an opaque pile of timestamped JSON.

Watchpost and fleet

A Watchpost is one independently useful deployed node. It stores its own posts and continues operating without a central service. A fleet pairs nodes for selective coordination.

Example: a warehouse Watchpost can monitor local switches and temperature sensors even if its link to head office is unavailable. Pairing may later share selected events; it does not turn the warehouse into a dependent collector.

Post, post kind, and collector

A post is the system, service, endpoint, or device the operator cares about: host, endpoint, application, database, network device, power device, sensor, or storage appliance. This is the canonical term in the UI, API, schema, and documentation. The Posts page explains the model, post kinds, monitoring methods, lifecycle, and health in full.

A post kind declares expected observations and available capabilities. A collector obtains those observations. A collector failure is not evidence that the post is healthy.

Signal, log, change, and event

A signal is a timestamped measurement or state such as cpu.percent=73.2. Logs preserve bounded text evidence. Changes record meaningful operational modifications such as a deployment. Events represent meaningful occurrences or transitions.

missing, stale, unknown, and bad quality are first-class states. None means numeric zero.

Rule, alert, and incident

A rule deterministically evaluates evidence. An alert is the active lifecycle produced by a rule. An incident is the larger durable episode joining related alerts, evidence, notes, ownership, investigation, actions, and resolution.

Investigation and action

Investigation is read-only. It may summarize verified evidence and state uncertainty. An action is a separately registered typed operation with validation, policy, audit, idempotency, optional independent approval, execution, and verification.