# Observability as a superpower

DevFeed: [Observability as a superpower](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/observability-as-a-superpower-11936.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://incident.io/blog/observability-as-a-superpower>)

Author: Sam Starling

Published: 2024-11-04T17:44:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [The incident.io Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/the-incident-io-blog.md>)

Topics: [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/observability.md>), [Traces](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/traces.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tracing.md>), [debugging](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/debugging.md>), [OpenTelemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/opentelemetry.md>), [telemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/telemetry.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/incident.md>)

Tags: [debugging](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/debugging.md>), [elasticsearch](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/elasticsearch.md>), [incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident.md>), [incident-channel](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-channel.md>), [incident-management](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-management.md>), [incident-response](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/incident-response.md>), [observability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/observability.md>), [opentelemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/opentelemetry.md>), [outage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/outage.md>), [performance](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/performance.md>), [post-mortem](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/post-mortem.md>), [postgres](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/postgres.md>), [prometheus](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/prometheus.md>), [slack-incident](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/slack-incident.md>), [traces](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/traces.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tracing.md>)

## AI overview

This developer article explains how observability helps incident.io detect bugs quickly, with a focus on browsing, querying, and constructing traces and spans. It describes traces as request or work paths through an application, shows how parent-child spans represent units of work, and discusses using OpenTelemetry to instrument systems and support debugging and performance tuning.

## Source excerpt

At incident.io, tracing is our secret weapon for catching bugs before customers do. This blog unpacks how traces and spans are built, showcasing their role in debugging and performance tuning. From span creation to integrating traces with logs and error reports, it's a practical guide for adding tracing to your observability toolkit--whether you're in development or production.