Arkhe-claude-plugins spring-boot-observability

Spring Boot 4 observability with Actuator, Micrometer, and OpenTelemetry. Use when configuring health indicators, health checks, custom metrics, distributed tracing, production endpoint exposure, Kubernetes probes, Cloud Run probes, logging, or monitoring. Covers Actuator endpoint security, Micrometer Timer/Counter/Gauge patterns, OpenTelemetry span customization, liveness/readiness probe setup, and metric tag best practices.

install

source · Clone the upstream repo

git clone https://github.com/joaquimscosta/arkhe-claude-plugins

Claude Code · Install into ~/.claude/skills/

T=$(mktemp -d) && git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/joaquimscosta/arkhe-claude-plugins "$T" && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r "$T/plugins/spring-boot/skills/spring-boot-observability" ~/.claude/skills/joaquimscosta-arkhe-claude-plugins-spring-boot-observability && rm -rf "$T"

manifest: plugins/spring-boot/skills/spring-boot-observability/SKILL.md

source content

Spring Boot Observability

Production observability with Actuator endpoints, Micrometer metrics, and OpenTelemetry tracing.

Core Components

Component	Purpose
Actuator	Health checks, info, metrics exposure, operational endpoints
Micrometer	Metrics abstraction (Timer, Counter, Gauge, DistributionSummary)
OpenTelemetry	Distributed tracing (default in Spring Boot 4)

Core Workflow

Add starters →

actuator

micrometer-registry-*

opentelemetry

Configure endpoint exposure → Secure sensitive endpoints
Define health groups → Separate liveness from readiness
Add custom metrics → Business-specific measurements
Configure tracing → Sampling, propagation, export

Quick Patterns

See EXAMPLES.md for complete working examples including:

Production Actuator Configuration with health groups and Kubernetes probes
Custom Health Indicator with latency monitoring (Java + Kotlin)
Custom Micrometer Metrics with Counter, Timer, and Gauge patterns
OpenTelemetry Span Customization with Observation API
OpenTelemetry Configuration for OTLP export
Actuator Endpoint Access Control (Boot 4)

Spring Boot 4 Specifics

OpenTelemetry is the default tracer (replaces Brave)

Health Indicator imports from

org.springframework.boot.health.contributor.*

Endpoint Access Control with
```
access: none/unrestricted/read-only
```

Detailed References

Examples: See EXAMPLES.md for complete working code examples
Troubleshooting: See TROUBLESHOOTING.md for common issues and Boot 4 migration
Actuator Endpoints: See references/ACTUATOR.md for endpoint configuration, security, custom endpoints
Micrometer Metrics: See references/METRICS.md for Timer, Counter, Gauge, DistributionSummary patterns
Distributed Tracing: See references/TRACING.md for OpenTelemetry, span customization, context propagation

Anti-Pattern Checklist

Anti-Pattern	Fix
DB checks in liveness probe	Move to readiness group only
100% trace sampling in production	Use 10% or less
Exposing all endpoints publicly	Separate management port + auth
High-cardinality metric tags	Use low-cardinality tags only
Missing graceful shutdown	Add `server.shutdown=graceful`
No health probe groups	Separate liveness and readiness

Related Skills

Need	Skill
Dependency validation	`spring-boot-verify`
Actuator security	`spring-boot-security`
Actuator testing	`spring-boot-testing`
Module metrics	`spring-boot-modulith`

Critical Reminders

Separate liveness from readiness — Liveness: "is process alive?", Readiness: "can handle traffic?"
Low cardinality tags only — User IDs, request IDs = bad; status codes, regions = good
Secure Actuator endpoints — Use separate port or authentication
Sample traces in production — 100% sampling overwhelms collectors
Graceful shutdown — Allow in-flight requests to complete