As some of you might know, we at hoistr.ai have been working for the past few months to build a product which can automatically investigate production issues, also known as incidents. As we near the completion of our initial version, we felt it is a good idea to start communicating why we are doing this before we get into what we are doing. Also, it is very likely that there will be companies solving the same problem, maybe with a very similar approach, and success might boil down to whom users trust. This biweekly blog is an attempt at building that trust.

I want to introduce the topics we will be discussing - developer tools, observability, deep learning (including LLMs), causal reasoning and most importantly, incident investigations. There is a lot to unpack in each one of these topics and I will do my best to do justice to them. The reason I chose these topics is that every single one of them is being used by us in cracking open the challenging task of incident investigation. It is important you understand how we look at their strengths and shortcomings and also, how they play with each other. Ideally, at the end of this blog series, you will be able to predict what Hoistr does without even seeing the product demo.

I want to discuss some ground rules on using AI to write the blogs themselves. In my opinion, it will defeat the purpose of communicating our viewpoint if we just used AI to write entire blogs for us. Having said that, while I would ideally like to not use AI at all and be able to write the blogs entirely by myself, the benefits AI provides to non-native English speakers such as myself are immense and are hard to ignore. This is especially true in getting the tone and grammar right, and my goal will be to limit the usage to these aspects. A rule I have set for myself is this - the first draft will always be mine, and only then will I ask AI to proofread it. Based on the feedback I receive, I will make changes and finally ask AI to focus on improving grammar and tone for specific points. The blog will then be passed on to friends and family who will further refine it. I will generally try not to use AI generated images but if I do, they will be marked as such.

It is an exciting time to be alive, and we can’t wait to share more every two weeks leading up to the public launch in a few months! If you would like to be notified as soon as the next blog releases, then please enter your email address in this form.

Stay tuned!

Deepak

Co-founder, Hoistr