datadog-cli

★ 2,144

by softaworks · part of softaworks/agent-toolkit

Datadog CLI for searching logs, querying metrics, tracing requests, and managing dashboards. Use this when debugging production issues or working with Datadog observability.

🧩 One of 7 skills in the softaworks/agent-toolkit package — works on its own, and pairs well with its siblings.

This is the playbook your agent receives when the skill activates — you don't need to read it to use the skill, but it's here to audit before installing.

Datadog CLI

A CLI tool for AI agents to debug and triage using Datadog logs and metrics.

Required Reading

You MUST read the relevant reference docs before using any command:

Commands Overview

Command	Description
`logs search`	Search logs with filters
`logs tail`	Stream logs in real-time
`logs trace`	Find logs for a distributed trace
`logs context`	Get logs before/after a timestamp
`logs patterns`	Group similar log messages
`logs compare`	Compare log counts between periods
`logs multi`	Run multiple queries in parallel
`logs agg`	Aggregate logs by facet
`metrics query`	Query timeseries metrics
`errors`	Quick error summary by service/type
`services`	List services with log activity
`dashboards`	Manage dashboards (CRUD)
`dashboard-lists`	Manage dashboard lists

Quick Examples

Search Errors

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs search --query "status:error" --from 1h --pretty

Tail Logs (Real-time)

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs tail --query "service:api status:error" --pretty

Error Summary

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli errors --from 1h --pretty

Trace Correlation

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs trace --id "abc123def456" --pretty

Query Metrics

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli metrics query --query "avg:system.cpu.user{*}" --from 1h --pretty

Compare Periods

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs compare --query "status:error" --period 1h --pretty

Global Flags

Flag	Description
`--pretty`	Human-readable output with colors
`--output <file>`	Export results to JSON file
`--site <site>`	Datadog site (e.g., `datadoghq.eu`)

Time Formats

Relative: 30m, 1h, 6h, 24h, 7d
ISO 8601: 2024-01-15T10:30:00Z

Incident Triage Workflow

# 1. Quick error overview
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli errors --from 1h --pretty

# 2. Is this new? Compare to previous period
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs compare --query "status:error" --period 1h --pretty

# 3. Find error patterns
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs patterns --query "status:error" --from 1h --pretty

# 4. Narrow down by service
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs search --query "status:error service:api" --from 1h --pretty

# 5. Get context around a timestamp
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs context --timestamp "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z" --service api --pretty

# 6. Follow the distributed trace
npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs trace --id "TRACE_ID" --pretty

See workflows.md for more debugging workflows.

Copy & paste — that's it

npx skills add https://github.com/softaworks/agent-toolkit --skill datadog-cli

Run this in your project — your agent picks the skill up automatically.

Setup

Environment Variables (Required)

export DD_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export DD_APP_KEY="your-app-key"

Get keys from: https://app.datadoghq.com/organization-settings/api-keys

Running the CLI

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli <command>

For non-US Datadog sites, use --site flag:

npx @leoflores/datadog-cli logs search --query "*" --site datadoghq.eu