Datadog Logs

Search, process, and archive logs with cost awareness.

Prerequisites

Datadog Pup should already be installed. See Setup Pup if not.

Command Execution Order (Token-Efficient)

For scoped commands, use this order:

1. Check context first (prior outputs, conversation, saved values).
2. If a required value is missing, run a discovery command first.
3. If still ambiguous, ask the user to confirm.
4. Then run the target command.
5. Avoid speculative commands likely to fail.

Quick Start

pup auth login

Search Logs

# Basic search
pup logs search --query="status:error" --from="1h"

# With filters
pup logs search --query="service:api status:error" --from="1h" --limit 100

# JSON output
pup logs search --query="@http.status_code:>=500" --from="1h"

Search Syntax

Query	Meaning
error	Full-text search
status:error	Tag equals
@http.status_code:500	Attribute equals
@http.status_code:>=400	Numeric range
service:api AND env:prod	Boolean
@message:*timeout*	Wildcard

Configuration APIs

Available log configuration commands in pup 0.42.0:

# List log archives
pup logs archives list

# List log restriction queries
pup logs restriction-queries list

# List custom log destinations
pup logs custom-destinations list

Common Processors

{
  "name": "API Logs",
  "filter": {"query": "service:api"},
  "processors": [
    {
      "type": "grok-parser",
      "name": "Parse nginx",
      "source": "message",
      "grok": {"match_rules": "%{IPORHOST:client_ip} %{DATA:method} %{DATA:path} %{NUMBER:status}"}
    },
    {
      "type": "status-remapper",
      "name": "Set severity",
      "sources": ["level", "severity"]
    },
    {
      "type": "attribute-remapper",
      "name": "Remap user_id",
      "sources": ["user_id"],
      "target": "usr.id"
    }
  ]
}

⚠️ Exclusion Filters (Cost Control)

Index only what matters:

{
  "name": "Drop debug logs",
  "filter": {"query": "status:debug"},
  "is_enabled": true
}

High-Volume Exclusions

# Find noisiest log sources
pup logs search --query="*" --from="1h" | jq 'group_by(.service) | map({service: .[0].service, count: length}) | sort_by(-.count)[:10]'

Exclude	Query
Health checks	@http.url:"/health" OR @http.url:"/ready"
Debug logs	status:debug
Static assets	@http.url:*.css OR @http.url:*.js
Heartbeats	@message:*heartbeat*

Archives

Store logs cheaply for compliance:

# List archives
pup logs archives list

# Archive config (S3 example)
{
  "name": "compliance-archive",
  "query": "*",
  "destination": {
    "type": "s3",
    "bucket": "my-logs-archive",
    "path": "/datadog"
  },
  "rehydration_tags": ["team:platform"]
}

Rehydrate (Restore)

# No `pup logs rehydrate` command in pup 0.42.0.
# Use Datadog UI/API for rehydration workflows.

Log-Based Metrics

Create metrics from logs (cheaper than indexing):

# List log-based metrics
pup logs metrics list

# Get one metric by ID
pup logs metrics get api.errors.count

⚠️ Cardinality warning: Group by bounded values only.

Sensitive Data

Scrubbing Rules

{
  "type": "hash-remapper",
  "name": "Hash emails",
  "sources": ["email", "@user.email"]
}

Never Log

# In your app - sanitize before sending
import re

def sanitize_log(message: str) -> str:
    # Remove credit cards
    message = re.sub(r'\b\d{4}[-\s]?\d{4}[-\s]?\d{4}[-\s]?\d{4}\b', '[REDACTED]', message)
    # Remove SSNs
    message = re.sub(r'\b\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}\b', '[REDACTED]', message)
    return message

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
Logs not appearing	Check agent, pipeline filters
High costs	Add exclusion filters
Search slow	Narrow time range, use indexes
Missing attributes	Check grok parser

References/Documentation

• Log Search Syntax
• Pipelines
• Exclusion Filters
• Archives