Spring Boot Actuator Skill

Overview

• Deliver production-ready observability for Spring Boot services using Actuator endpoints, probes, and Micrometer integration.
• Standardize health, metrics, and diagnostics configuration while delegating deep reference material to references/.
• Support platform requirements for secure operations, SLO reporting, and incident diagnostics.

When to Use

• Trigger: "enable actuator endpoints" – Bootstrap Actuator for a new or existing Spring Boot service.
• Trigger: "secure management port" – Apply Spring Security policies to protect management traffic.
• Trigger: "configure health probes" – Define readiness and liveness groups for orchestrators.
• Trigger: "export metrics to prometheus" – Wire Micrometer registries and tune metric exposure.
• Trigger: "debug actuator startup" – Inspect condition evaluations and startup metrics when endpoints are missing or slow.

Quick Start

<!-- Maven -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

// Gradle
dependencies {
    implementation "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator"
}

After adding the dependency, verify endpoints respond:

curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/health
curl http://localhost:8080/actuator/info

Instructions

1. Add Actuator Dependency

Include spring-boot-starter-actuator in your build configuration.

Validate: Restart the service and confirm /actuator/health and /actuator/info respond with 200 OK.

2. Expose Required Endpoints

• Set management.endpoints.web.exposure.include to the precise list or "*" for internal deployments.
• Adjust management.endpoints.web.base-path (e.g., /management) when the default /actuator conflicts with routing.
• Review detailed endpoint semantics in references/endpoint-reference.md.

Validate: curl http://localhost:8080/actuator returns the list of exposed endpoints.

3. Secure Management Traffic

• Apply an isolated SecurityFilterChain using EndpointRequest.toAnyEndpoint() with role-based rules.
• Combine management.server.port with firewall controls or service mesh policies for operator-only access.
• Keep /actuator/health/** publicly accessible only when required; otherwise enforce authentication.

Validate: Unauthenticated requests to protected endpoints return 401 Unauthorized.

4. Configure Health Probes

• Enable management.endpoint.health.probes.enabled=true for /health/liveness and /health/readiness.
• Group indicators via management.endpoint.health.group.* to match platform expectations.
• Implement custom indicators by extending HealthIndicator or ReactiveHealthContributor; sample implementations in references/examples.md#custom-health-indicator.

Validate: /actuator/health/readiness returns UP with all mandatory components before promoting to production.

5. Publish Metrics and Traces

• Activate Micrometer exporters (Prometheus, OTLP, Wavefront, StatsD) via management.metrics.export.*.
• Apply MeterRegistryCustomizer beans to add application, environment, and business tags for observability correlation.
• Surface HTTP request metrics with server.observation.* configuration when using Spring Boot 3.2+.

Validate: Scrape /actuator/prometheus and confirm required meters (http.server.requests, jvm.memory.used) are present.

6. Enable Diagnostics Tooling

• Turn on /actuator/startup (Spring Boot 3.5+) and /actuator/conditions during incident response to inspect auto-configuration decisions.
• Register an HttpExchangeRepository (e.g., InMemoryHttpExchangeRepository) before enabling /actuator/httpexchanges for request auditing.
• Consult references/endpoint-reference.md for endpoint behaviors and limits.

Validate: /actuator/startup and /actuator/conditions return valid JSON payloads.

Examples

Basic – Expose health and info safely

management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: "health,info"
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: never

Intermediate – Readiness group with custom indicator

@Component
public class PaymentsGatewayHealth implements HealthIndicator {

    private final PaymentsClient client;

    public PaymentsGatewayHealth(PaymentsClient client) {
        this.client = client;
    }

    @Override
    public Health health() {
        boolean reachable = client.ping();
        return reachable ? Health.up().withDetail("latencyMs", client.latency()).build()
                         : Health.down().withDetail("error", "Gateway timeout").build();
    }
}

management:
  endpoint:
    health:
      probes:
        enabled: true
      group:
        readiness:
          include: "readinessState,db,paymentsGateway"
          show-details: always

Advanced – Dedicated management port with Prometheus export

management:
  server:
    port: 9091
    ssl:
      enabled: true
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: "health,info,metrics,prometheus"
      base-path: "/management"
  metrics:
    export:
      prometheus:
        descriptions: true
        step: 30s
  endpoint:
    health:
      show-details: when-authorized
      roles: "ENDPOINT_ADMIN"

@Configuration
public class ActuatorSecurityConfig {

    @Bean
    SecurityFilterChain actuatorChain(HttpSecurity http) throws Exception {
        http.securityMatcher(EndpointRequest.toAnyEndpoint())
            .authorizeHttpRequests(c -> c
                .requestMatchers(EndpointRequest.to("health")).permitAll()
                .anyRequest().hasRole("ENDPOINT_ADMIN"))
            .httpBasic(Customizer.withDefaults());
        return http.build();
    }
}

More end-to-end samples are available in references/examples.md.

Best Practices

• Keep SKILL.md concise and rely on references/ for verbose documentation to conserve context.
• Apply the principle of least privilege: expose only required endpoints and restrict sensitive ones.
• Use immutable configuration via profile-specific YAML to align environments.
• Monitor actuator traffic separately to detect scraping abuse or brute-force attempts.
• Automate regression checks by scripting curl probes in CI/CD pipelines.

Constraints and Warnings

• Avoid exposing /actuator/env, /actuator/configprops, /actuator/logfile, and /actuator/heapdump on public networks.
• Do not ship custom health indicators that block event loop threads or exceed 250 ms unless absolutely necessary.
• Ensure Actuator metrics exporters run on supported Micrometer registries; unsupported exporters require custom registry beans.
• Maintain compatibility with Spring Boot 3.5.x conventions; older versions may lack probes and observation features.
• Never expose actuator endpoints without authentication in production environments.
• Health indicators should not perform expensive operations that could impact application performance.
• Be cautious with /actuator/beans and /actuator/mappings as they reveal internal application structure.

Reference Materials

• Endpoint quick reference
• Implementation examples
• Official documentation extract
• Auditing with Actuator
• Cloud Foundry integration
• Enabling Actuator features
• HTTP exchange recording
• JMX exposure
• Monitoring and metrics
• Logging configuration
• Metrics exporters
• how to use spring-boot-actuator
  CursorClaude CodeClineCodexWindsurfGooseGitHub CopilotVS CodeGemini CLIKiloOpencodeKimi CLIRoo ClineAiderContinueZedBolt.newLovablev0Replit AgentSweepSmol DeveloperDevinCavemanAmpAntigravity

  How to use spring-boot-actuator on Cursor

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  1

  Prerequisites

  Before installing skills in Cursor, ensure your development environment meets these requirements:

  • ›Cursor installed and configured on your development machine
  • ›Node.js version 16.0+ with npm package manager (verify with node --version)
  • ›Active project directory or workspace where you want to add spring-boot-actuator

  2

  Execute installation command

  Execute the skills CLI command in your project's root directory to begin installation:

  $npx skills add https://github.com/giuseppe-trisciuoglio/developer-kit --skill spring-boot-actuatorcopy

  The skills CLI fetches spring-boot-actuator from GitHub repository giuseppe-trisciuoglio/developer-kit and configures it for Cursor.

  3

  Select Cursor when prompted

  The CLI will show a list of available agents. Use arrow keys to navigate and space to select Cursor:

  ◆ Which agents do you want to install to?

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  │ ── Universal (.agents/skills) ── always included ────

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  │ ●Cursor(selected)

  │ • Cursor

  │ • Windsurf

  4

  Verify installation

  Confirm successful installation by checking the skill directory location:

  .cursor/skills/spring-boot-actuator

  Reload or restart Cursor to activate spring-boot-actuator. Access the skill through slash commands (e.g., /spring-boot-actuator) or your agent's skill management interface.

  ⚠

  Security & Verification Notice

  We perform automated surface-level scans (Gen AI Scanner, Socket, Snyk) during installation. These checks detect common vulnerabilities but do not guarantee complete security. Always review skill source code and verify the publisher's reputation before production use.

  Skills execute code in your development environment. Always verify the publisher's identity, review recent commits, and test in isolated environments before production deployment.

  Additional Resources

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