---
name: NestJS Observability
description: Structured logging (Pino) and Prometheus metrics. Use when adding structured logging with Pino or Prometheus metrics to NestJS services.
metadata:
labels: [nestjs, logging, monitoring, pino]
triggers:
files: ['main.ts', '**/*.module.ts']
keywords: [nestjs-pino, Prometheus, Logger, reqId]
---
# Observability Standards
## **Priority: P1 (OPERATIONAL)**
Logging, monitoring, and observability patterns for production applications.
- **Standard**: Use `nestjs-pino` for high-performance JSON logging.
- **Why**: Node's built-in `console.log` is blocking and unstructured.
- **Configuration**:
- **Redaction**: Mandatory masking of sensitive fields (`password`, `token`, `email`).
- **Context**: Always inject `Logger` and set the context (`LoginService`).
## Tracing (Correlation)
- **Request ID**: Every log line **must** include a `reqId` (Request ID).
- `nestjs-pino` handles this automatically using `AsyncLocalStorage`.
- **Propagation**: Pass `x-request-id` to downstream microservices/database queries key to trace flows.
## API Overhead & Database Benchmarking
- **Execution Bucket Strategy**: When performance profiling is enabled, utilize global interceptors combined with `AsyncLocalStorage` to split and expose latency into logical buckets.
- **Headers**: Expose the metrics via HTTP Headers on the response for immediate feedback during development or testing:
- `X-Response-Duration-Ms` (Total execution time)
- `X-DB-Execution-Ms` (Time spent exclusively in database queries, tracked via TypeORM loggers)
- `X-API-Overhead-Ms` (Time spent in NestJS interceptors, guards, and serialization)
- **Security**: Only enable performance headers and detailed SQL benchmarking in development or when a specific feature flag (`ENABLE_PERFORMANCE_BENCHMARK`) is explicitly active.
## Metrics
- **Exposure**: Use `@willsoto/nestjs-prometheus` to expose `/metrics` for Prometheus scraping.
- **Key Metrics**:
1. `http_request_duration_seconds` (Histogram)
2. `db_query_duration_seconds` (Histogram)
3. `memory_usage_bytes` (Gauge)
## Health Checks
- **Terminus**: Implement explicit logic for "Liveness" (I'm alive) vs "Readiness" (I can take traffic).
- **DB Check**: `TypeOrmHealthIndicator` / `PrismaHealthIndicator`.
- **Memory Check**: Fail if Heap > 300MB (prevent crash loops).
