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Section 1 · Journey overview

A watcher uses the intent you describe. An alert rule uses a query and condition you write. Assistant can recommend either or both for a service.

Estimated time: 2 min

How a watcher differs from an alert rule

A Grafana alert rule is a query you write with a fixed condition. A watcher is different: you describe what healthy looks like, and Assistant turns that into checks against your data.

For checkout, an alert rule fires when error rate stays above 5% for the pending period you set, which is how long the condition must be met before the rule starts firing. A watcher can also use context you give it, such as that short spikes during a rollout are expected and that checkout should recover within a few minutes.

Alert ruleWatcher
You provideA query, condition, and pending periodIntent: what healthy looks like, including noise you expect
What “bad” isA threshold you wroteChecks Assistant derived from your data
What it producesFires when the condition holds for the pending periodAn assessment for each completed run: All clear, Flagged, or Escalated
How it notifiesTo a destination you choose, directly or through routing rulesThrough the Slack, Microsoft Teams, webhook, or Grafana Alerting notifications you turn on

An alert rule’s destination is a contact point, for example an email address or a Slack channel. The routing rules that decide which alert reaches which contact point are notification policies.

How they work together

A watcher can send its findings to Grafana Alerting. Your notification policies and contact points then control delivery, the same way they do for alert rules.

To decide for a specific service, use Assistant’s Alerts & Watchers mode. Describe the service or scope you want to review, and Assistant recommends alerts, watchers, both, or no notification based on your telemetry and needs.

The hands-on path creates a watcher and leaves its notification and investigation actions off.