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auditing-warehouse-source-health

Audit the health of a PostHog project's data warehouse sources and syncs — find every broken or degraded source connection, sync schema, and webhook channel. Use when the user asks "why are my imports failing?", "what's broken with my sources?", "why is my warehouse data stale?", or wants a one-shot triage of source/sync health before deciding where to dig in. Produces a prioritized report grouped by severity, with recommended next steps. For materialized-view health use `auditing-warehouse-view-health`; for a single failing sync use `diagnosing-failed-warehouse-syncs`.

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Auditing data warehouse source health

This skill produces a project-wide audit of the source and sync side of the data warehouse pipeline — source connections, sync schemas, and webhook push channels. Use it when the user wants a summary of what's broken with their imports, not a deep-dive on one sync. The deep-dive on individual failures is diagnosing-failed-warehouse-syncs; this skill is the scan that tells them where to look first.

The same underlying endpoint (data-warehouse-data-health-issues-retrieve) also reports materialized-view, batch-export-destination, and transformation issues. Materialized views are covered by auditing-warehouse-view-health. Destinations (batch exports) and transformations are owned by other products — surface them if they appear, but route them to the relevant team rather than diagnosing here.

When to use this skill

  • "Why are my imports failing?" / "What's broken with my sources?"
  • "Why is my warehouse data stale?"
  • The user is new to a project and wants to know which sources they've inherited and whether they're healthy
  • Weekly or monthly review of source/sync health
  • Dashboards are stale and the user isn't sure which source is at fault

Available tools

ToolPurpose
data-warehouse-data-health-issues-retrieveOne-shot: all failed/degraded items across the whole pipeline
external-data-sources-listAll sources with status and latest error
external-data-schemas-listAll schemas with status, last_synced_at, latest_error
external-data-sources-webhook-info-retrieveCheck per-source webhook state (not covered by data-health-issues)

The data-health-issues endpoint aggregates across the whole pipeline — it's the fastest path to a summary. Filter its results to the source and external_data_sync types for this audit. Use the list endpoints when you need more context than the summary provides (row counts, non-failing items, schema-level detail).

What counts as a source/sync "issue"

From the data-health endpoint, this audit cares about two of the five categories:

typeTriggerTypical urgency
sourceExternalDataSource.status = Error — whole source connection brokenHigh
external_data_syncschema in Failed or BillingLimitReached state (the data-health endpoint returns status: "failed" or status: "billing_limit" respectively)Medium–High

Each entry includes id, name, type, status, error, failed_at, url, and source_type.

The other categories the endpoint returns are out of scope for this skill:

  • materialized_viewauditing-warehouse-view-health
  • destination (batch export) → owned by the batch exports / data pipelines product
  • transformation (HogFunction) → owned by the CDP / ingestion side

Note the data-health endpoint only reports active failures. For source/sync health it doesn't flag:

  • Schemas paused by the user (should_sync = false)
  • Schemas that are slow or stale but technically Completed
  • Webhook problems on sync_type: "webhook" schemas. The bulk-sync safety net can succeed while the webhook push channel is silently broken (deregistered, disabled on the remote side, failing signature verification). These don't surface in data-health-issues — check per-source with webhook-info-retrieve.

If the user asks about staleness or unused items, reach beyond this endpoint — see Step 4.

Workflow

Step 1 — One-shot pull

Call data-warehouse-data-health-issues-retrieve and keep the source and external_data_sync entries.

If there are no source/sync issues, tell the user their sources are healthy and stop. Don't invent problems.

Step 2 — Group and prioritize

  1. Sources in Error first. A source failure cascades — every schema under it is effectively dead until the source reconnects. Fix these first.
  2. Sync schemas next, in this order:
    • status: "billing_limit" entries (billing issue, non-technical — flag and route to billing)
    • Failed on heavily-used tables (user asks / check row counts via schemas-list if needed)
    • Failed on less-used tables

Step 3 — Present the audit

Render a prioritized report. Don't dump the raw JSON — human-readable table per category:

## Data warehouse source health — 4 issues

### 🔴 Sources (1)
- Stripe — authentication failed (failed 2h ago). All 8 tables under it are currently dead.
  → `diagnosing-failed-warehouse-syncs` on this source

### 🟠 Sync schemas (3)
- postgres_prod.orders (Failed 6h ago) — column "updated_at" does not exist
- postgres_prod.invoices (Failed 6h ago) — column "updated_at" does not exist
- hubspot.contacts (BillingLimitReached) — team quota exceeded

Recommended order:
1. Stripe auth (everything under it is dead)
2. Schema-drift on postgres_prod.orders / invoices — looks like upstream renamed a column
3. Billing limit on hubspot

The exact format is less important than: prioritized, grouped, actionable, and hinting at the right next skill.

Step 4 — Go beyond active failures (when asked)

If the user wants more than just "what's on fire" — e.g. "what else should I look at?" — cross-check:

Stale but "Completed" schemas: Call external-data-schemas-list and look for schemas with old last_synced_at relative to their sync_frequency. A schema on 1hour frequency that last synced 3 days ago is effectively broken even if status says Completed.

Sources with zero sync activity: Sources where every schema has should_sync: false or status = Paused. These were set up and then abandoned — candidates for cleanup via external-data-sources-destroy.

Broken webhooks on webhook-type schemas: Iterate the sources that have any schema with sync_type: "webhook" (visible via external-data-schemas-list). For each, call external-data-sources-webhook-info-retrieve({source_id}):

  • exists: false while a schema is sync_type: "webhook" → webhook was never registered, or was deleted. Push channel is dead; only the bulk fallback is ingesting.
  • external_status.error present → remote service is reporting a problem (permission revoked, endpoint deleted on their dashboard).
  • external_status.status not "enabled" → remote has disabled the endpoint (often after repeated delivery failures).

Report these separately from the primary audit — they're a different shape of problem than failed syncs, and the fix is a different skill (diagnosing-failed-warehouse-syncs scenario I, or setting-up-a-data-warehouse-source step 5.5).

Only run these extra checks if the user explicitly asks for a broader audit — they involve more tool calls and heuristics.

Step 5 — Offer the next step

End the audit with a clear hand-off:

  • "Want me to dig into the Stripe failure?" → hands off to diagnosing-failed-warehouse-syncs
  • "Want me to fix the schema drift on orders?" → hands off to tuning-incremental-sync-config
  • "Want to disable the billing-capped schemas?" → one-click via external-data-schemas-partial-update

Never start applying fixes autonomously from an audit — the audit's job is to report and recommend, not remediate. Any fix should be confirmed explicitly before executing.

Important notes

  • The audit is read-only. Never call destructive tools from the audit flow. Hand off to the diagnosis/tuning skills — which in turn confirm before acting.
  • Empty = healthy. Don't pad an empty audit with hypothetical issues. "No source issues found" is a good answer.
  • Source failures cascade. When reporting a source in Error, also mention which schemas under it are affected (or will be, once they try to sync again). The user needs to understand the blast radius.
  • Billing limits aren't technical problems. Flag them but route to billing / quota discussion, not to a recovery action.
  • data-health-issues only surfaces active failures. For staleness or abandoned sources you need to cross-check the list endpoints. Only do this when the user explicitly asks for a deeper audit.
  • Webhook health is separate from schema health. The data-health endpoint doesn't know about webhook state. When a user's request mentions "real-time", "Stripe webhook", or "why is data hours behind on a webhook source", go straight to webhook-info-retrieve rather than inferring from schema status.
  • Materialized views, destinations, and transformations are out of scope here. They share the data-health endpoint but belong to other audits/products — route, don't diagnose.
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PostHog/posthog
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