--- title: "Observability Is Converging. Humans Aren’t the Only Ones Querying It Anymore" url: https://daily.dev/posts/observability-is-converging-humans-aren-t-the-only-ones-querying-it-anymore-pnf9z1wtx source_url: https://itnext.io/observability-is-converging-humans-arent-the-only-ones-querying-it-anymore-799004fff57d type: article source: "ITNEXT" published: 2026-08-17T19:23:26.931Z updated: 2026-08-17T19:25:22.832Z tags: ["observability", "mcp", "opentelemetry", "grafana", "clickhouse"] reading_time: 13 upvotes: 5 comments: 0 language: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Observability Is Converging. Humans Aren’t the Only Ones Querying It Anymore **[ITNEXT](https://daily.dev/sources/itnext)** · 13 min read · 5 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Unified observability storage combining metrics, logs, and traces in a single columnar store is now mature technology, with SigNoz, ClickStack, Honeycomb, and Grafana's LGTM stack each taking different architectural approaches. Historical context traces the three-pillar model's origins to independent tool lineages (RRDtool/Prometheus for metrics, Splunk/Elasticsearch for logs, Dapper/Zipkin for traces) and the unification arguments from Peter Bourgon and Charity Majors dating back to 2017. The piece then argues the real frontier is agentic access: SigNoz, ClickHouse, Grafana, and Honeycomb have all shipped MCP servers and AI-native tooling in 2026, and ClickHouse found that purpose-built semantic tools for agents outperform raw SQL access. Open questions remain about how agent-driven exploratory query patterns should reshape data layout, query planning, and where observability semantics should live in the stack. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Questions this post answers ### What is ClickStack and when did ClickHouse release it? ClickStack is an open-source observability stack from ClickHouse that packages the OpenTelemetry Collector, ClickHouse itself, and a query experience into one system for exploring metrics, logs, and traces together. It followed ClickHouse's acquisition of HyperDX in March 2025, with ClickStack shipping that same May. Full-text search in ClickHouse is generally available, though it does not implement BM25-style relevance scoring; the TimeSeries engine and PromQL support remain experimental. _Track how observability stacks like ClickStack evolve by following backend infrastructure coverage on daily.dev._ ### Why do coding agents perform worse with a general-purpose ClickHouse MCP server than with specialized observability tools? Models perform noticeably better against structured investigative primitives than against raw SQL exploration, according to ClickHouse's internal evaluations. While building AI Notebooks, ClickHouse found that wrapping log pattern analysis, trace outlier investigation, and cross-signal correlation into semantic tools for agents reduced tool calls and improved consistency compared to their existing general-purpose MCP server. _Developers wiring agents into observability platforms can compare MCP server designs on daily.dev._ ### Who first proposed unifying metrics, logs, and traces into a single observability system? Peter Bourgon proposed the idea in his August 2018 post 'Observability signals,' suggesting an uber-system that takes raw events at the front door and de-multiplexes them by shape into purpose-driven backends. He had earlier popularized the three-pillars framing in a February 2017 post after the Distributed Tracing Summit, making him both an originator of the pillar model and one of its first critics. _Engineers debating observability architecture can dig into this history on daily.dev before picking a stack._ ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Have you heard? Clickhouse is winning the observability wars\!](https://daily.dev/posts/have-you-heard-clickhouse-is-winning-the-observability-wars--5bpefin3l) · Charity · 18 upvotes · 0 comments - [Breaking free from rising observability costs with open cost-efficient architectures](https://daily.dev/posts/breaking-free-from-rising-observability-costs-with-open-cost-efficient-architectures-ngdv14t4e) · ClickHouse · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [Why Logs, Metrics and Traces Still Don’t Give You Real Observability](https://daily.dev/posts/why-logs-metrics-and-traces-still-don-t-give-you-real-observability-xkoqmowxi) · DevOps.com · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#observability](https://daily.dev/tags/observability), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#opentelemetry](https://daily.dev/tags/opentelemetry), [#grafana](https://daily.dev/tags/grafana), [#clickhouse](https://daily.dev/tags/clickhouse) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/observability-is-converging-humans-aren-t-the-only-ones-querying-it-anymore-pnf9z1wtx)