postgresql-operations

PostgreSQL Operations

Acknowledgement: Shared by Peter Bamuhigire, techguypeter.com, +256 784 464178.

Use this parent skill as the active PostgreSQL operations entrypoint. Keep operational decisions tied to evidence: metrics, logs, query plans, lock graphs, replication state, backup history, and recovery objectives.

Use When

• Troubleshooting slow queries, lock contention, bloat, vacuum pressure, replication lag, or connection exhaustion.
• Designing backup, restore, HA, maintenance, monitoring, or capacity plans for PostgreSQL.
• Reviewing production database configuration, operational runbooks, and incident evidence.

Do Not Use When

• The task is unrelated to this parent skill or is better handled by a narrower active parent named in the workflow.
• The request only needs a trivial answer and no reference module needs to be loaded.

Required Inputs

• Gather the concrete system, repository, environment, constraints, and deliverable before loading references.
• Identify which absorbed reference file is needed; do not load every migrated reference by default.

Workflow

1. Load database-reliability for SLOs, error budgets, incident posture, and recovery evidence.
2. Load the task-specific reference:
   • references/postgresql-administration.md for administration, backup, restore, roles, maintenance, and replication.
   • references/postgresql-performance.md for query tuning, indexing, EXPLAIN review, statistics, vacuum, and capacity work.
3. Pair with postgresql-engineering when schema or SQL changes are part of the fix.
4. Pair with observability-monitoring when dashboards, alerting, traces, or metrics need implementation.

Quality Standards

• No operational recommendation without a measurement path and rollback plan.
• State RPO, RTO, maintenance window, blast radius, and verification command for every risky operation.
• Prefer small, testable changes over broad tuning sweeps.

Anti-Patterns

• Treating absorbed reference files as active skills or separate routing entrypoints.
• Loading every migrated child reference instead of the one that matches the task.
• Producing generic advice without constraints, evidence, or next verification steps.

Outputs

• Runbook, tuning plan, incident analysis, backup/restore plan, or operational review with verification commands.

References

• Load only the eferences/.md files named in the workflow when their depth is required.