Running the Observatory

The TALA Intent Observatory is a topology-first dashboard that visualizes the system in real time. It ships as a static HTML/CSS/JS application served by nginx, with Prometheus as the metrics backend.

Architecture

┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐  ┌─────────────┐
│ sim-incident │  │ sim-deploy  │  │ sim-observe  │  │sim-provision│
│   :9101      │  │   :9102     │  │   :9103      │  │   :9104     │
└──────┬───────┘  └──────┬──────┘  └──────┬───────┘  └──────┬──────┘
       │                 │                │                  │
       └────────┬────────┴────────┬───────┴──────────┬───────┘
                │                 │                   │
         ┌──────▼──────┐   ┌─────▼─────┐   ┌────────▼────────┐
         │ Prometheus   │   │  Grafana  │   │   Observatory   │
         │   :9090      │   │  :3000    │   │   (nginx) :8080 │
         └─────────────┘   └───────────┘   └─────────────────┘

Starting

cd deploy
cp .env.example .env
docker compose up -d

What You'll See

Landing Page

The landing page tells the TALA story — what it is, what problem it solves, and why it exists. A live topology visualization shows the four operational domains with real-time metrics flowing, even before you enter the dashboard.

Dashboard Topology

After clicking Enter Observatory, you see a full-viewport topology graph:

• Four domain nodes — Incident Response, Continuous Deployment, Observability, Provisioning — each showing live intent counts, ingest rates, and patterns detected
• Four capability nodes — Extract (command to intent), Remember (HNSW semantic index), Persist (WAL durable log), Connect (causal edge formation)
• Central narrative layer — the TALA hub showing the total edge count of the growing narrative graph
• Animated edges with flowing particles representing intent being structured in real time

Detail Panels

Click any node to open a detail drawer with deep telemetry:

• Domain nodes show narrative structure (graph nodes, causal edges, connectivity), what TALA learned (patterns, clusters, replays, insights), and outcome distribution
• Capability nodes show subsystem-specific metrics: pipeline waterfall, HNSW capacity gauge, WAL/hot buffer/segment stats, or graph relation breakdown
• The narrative layer hub shows aggregate intelligence across all domains plus lock contention health

Chaos Mode Indicator

When the chaos engine injects faults, a floating indicator appears at the bottom of the topology showing:

• Current mode: Failure Injection, Latency Storm, Retry Cascade, Mixed Chaos, or Stampede
• Event rate in events/minute
• Which domains are affected
• Visual disruption on affected edges and nodes

Configuration

See Configuration for tuning ingest rates, chaos probability, and other parameters.