Find what is actually firing
Sentry answers precise questions precisely and vague questions misleadingly.
The work is scoping the question before searching, and ranking what comes back
by impact instead of by relevance.
1. Scope to the right project first
Run find_organizations and find_projects before searching if you are not
certain where the code reports to. A monorepo often maps to several Sentry
projects (api, web, desktop), and a search in the wrong one returns a
confident, empty answer. Say which project you searched.
2. Search the way Sentry indexes, not the way people ask
"Is checkout broken?" becomes queries on what Sentry actually stores: the
error type, the transaction or URL, the release. Prefer search_issues for
"what problems exist" and search_events for "how often / for whom / since
when". Run two or three narrow queries over one broad one, and time-bound
them — is:unresolved over the last 24h answers a different question than
all-time.
3. Rank by impact, not by recency of the search result
The issues worth reporting are the ones with high event counts, many affected
users, or a first-seen that matches a recent release. A brand-new issue with
three events can matter more than a year-old one with thousands — say why the
ones you picked matter. When a number is load-bearing (error rate, affected
users), take it from search_events rather than eyeballing the issue list.
4. Answer with links and the time window
Every issue you cite gets its Sentry link and the window you looked at.
"No matching issues in the last 7 days in api" is a complete, useful
answer — silence about scope is how "it's fine" turns out to mean "I searched
the wrong project".
Anti-patterns
- Reporting the first page as the truth. Sort order is not severity.
- Mixing environments. Production noise and staging noise answer different
questions; filter to the environment the user cares about.
- Counting issues to measure health. Ten one-off issues can be healthier
than one issue hitting every user; lead with events and users affected.
- Answering "is it stable" without a baseline. Compare against the prior
window or the prior release, not against zero.