Datadog APM
Distributed tracing, service maps, and performance analysis.
Routing — Read This First
Match the user's request to one of the entries below. Each entry has the same shape: triggers → which sub-skill to load → the anti-pattern to avoid. If a request seems to fit more than one entry, see "Overlap disambiguation". If nothing matches, see "None of the above" at the end.
Kubernetes APM install / instrument / onboard — trigger when the user mentions Kubernetes, K8s, EKS, GKE, AKS, kind, minikube, K3s, helm, DatadogAgent CR, kubectl, SSI on a cluster, pod injection, or init containers.
Immediately read .claude/skills/dd-apm/k8s-ssi/agent-install/SKILL.md now, then .claude/skills/dd-apm/k8s-ssi/enable-ssi/SKILL.md, then .claude/skills/dd-apm/k8s-ssi/verify-ssi/SKILL.md — do not proceed from memory.
Common wrong approaches that LOOK like they work but silently fail:
helm install datadog datadog/datadog— the standard chart does NOT support SSI via DatadogAgent CR.- Adding
ddtraceimports orddtrace-runto the app — SSI auto-instruments WITHOUT any code changes.admission.datadoghq.com/enabledannotations — that's admission controller config injection, not SSI init container injection.
Linux APM install / instrument / onboard — trigger when the user mentions a single host, VM, EC2 instance, bare-metal, RHEL/Ubuntu/Debian, systemd, or no orchestrator.
Immediately read .claude/skills/dd-apm/linux-ssi/agent-install/SKILL.md now, then .claude/skills/dd-apm/linux-ssi/enable-ssi/SKILL.md, then .claude/skills/dd-apm/linux-ssi/verify-ssi/SKILL.md — do not proceed from memory.
Do NOT install the agent via plain
apt-get install datadog-agent(or yum equivalent) and assume SSI follows — host auto-instrumentation requires the install script with the SSI flags, which the sub-skill walks through.
Service rename / service remapping — trigger when the user mentions renaming a service, collapsing multiple service names, stripping suffixes/prefixes, or cleaning up inferred services.
Immediately read .claude/skills/dd-apm/service-remapping/SKILL.md now — do not proceed from memory.
Do NOT change
tags.datadoghq.com/servicelabels orDD_SERVICEenv vars to rename a service in Datadog. That requires a rollout and only affects new data. Use a service remapping rule — it rewrites the name at ingestion time with no deployment change.
Data Streams Monitoring (DSM) / queue and pipeline monitoring: trigger when the user mentions data streams, DSM, consumer or queue lag, pipeline latency, end-to-end latency across queues, or monitoring Kafka / RabbitMQ / SQS / SNS / Kinesis / Pub/Sub flows between services.
Immediately read .claude/skills/dd-apm/enable-dsm/SKILL.md now. Do not proceed from memory.
Do NOT install a separate DSM agent, package, or library. DSM runs in the Datadog SDK that APM already injected and is enabled with one setting per service. Do NOT enable it without first telling the user it is included with APM Pro and Enterprise and billed separately on base APM.
Overlap disambiguation
When a request could plausibly fit more than one entry above, use these tiebreakers:
None of the above
If the request doesn't match any entry above, continue reading the trace-search, service analysis, and metrics content below. If even that doesn't fit, ask the user to clarify — do not invent a workflow.
Requirements
Datadog Labs Pup should be installed. See Setup Pup if not.
Command Execution Order (Token-Efficient)
For scoped commands, use this order:
- Check context first (prior outputs, conversation, saved values).
- If a required value is missing, run a discovery command first.
- If still ambiguous, ask the user to confirm.
- Then run the target command.
- Avoid speculative commands likely to fail.
Quick Start
Services
List Services
Service Stats
Service Map
Traces
Search Traces
Trace Detail
Key Metrics
Service Level Objectives
Link APM to SLOs:


