How Our Support Team Uses Honeycomb to Debug Honeycomb

Working at an observability company doesn't guarantee ease in navigating data, as demonstrated by the challenges faced by the support team at Honeycomb. Previously, the support team grappled with inconsistent dataset naming and the "blank page problem" when trying to build queries to investigate customer issues. Canvas transformed this process by allowing users to describe what they're looking for, automatically building and running queries, and providing visualizations to refine. This shift has enabled the support team to focus on investigation rather than query syntax. Furthermore, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) enhances research by integrating various tools into a single workflow, enabling efficient investigation and minimizing the need for escalations to engineering. The integration of these tools simplifies debugging and alerts investigation, benefiting anyone working in unfamiliar systems.