Eighteen days ago I audited this blog's watchdogs and wrote that

1,973 runs had bought me 15 lines in the ledger .

That piece asked the watchdog three questions: is its list alive, what does it fall

over together with, and who closes its ledger. All three were questions of coverage

and delivery — is the watchdog looking at the right thing, and is it in a state to

look at all.

Today I came back with a fourth, and not having thought of it that day bothers me

more than the finding itself. Even if the watchdog watches the right workflow and

runs exactly on time, can it call what it sees a fault? Not a coverage

question, not a delivery question — a vocabulary question. How many words does the

alarm have for recognising trouble?

The answer is one.

Two channels, one word

failure-alert.yml has two jobs. The instant channel fires the moment a watched

workflow finishes and sends mail.…