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nthlayer ownership

Resolve service ownership from multiple sources with confidence-based attribution.

This command queries Backstage, PagerDuty, CODEOWNERS, and Kubernetes labels to determine who owns a service.

Usage

nthlayer ownership <service.yaml> [options]

Options

Option Description
--env ENVIRONMENT Environment name (dev, staging, prod)
--format {table,json} Output format (default: table)
--backstage-url URL Backstage catalog URL
--pagerduty-token TOKEN PagerDuty API token
--k8s-namespace NAMESPACE Kubernetes namespace to search
--codeowners-root PATH Root directory for CODEOWNERS file
--demo Show demo output with sample data

Environment Variables

Variable Description
NTHLAYER_BACKSTAGE_URL Default Backstage catalog URL
PAGERDUTY_API_KEY PagerDuty API token
KUBECONFIG Kubernetes configuration file

Examples

Basic Ownership Resolution

nthlayer ownership checkout-service.yaml

Output: 

╭──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ Ownership: checkout-service                                                   │
╰──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯

Primary Owner:
  Team:        payments-team
  Confidence:  0.95 (high)
  Source:      backstage

Ownership Sources:
┌─────────────────┬─────────────────┬────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│ Source          │ Owner           │ Confidence │ Details                     │
├─────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼─────────────────────────────┤
│ Backstage       │ payments-team   │ 0.95       │ spec.owner in catalog       │
│ PagerDuty       │ payments-team   │ 0.90       │ Escalation policy owner     │
│ CODEOWNERS      │ @acme/payments  │ 0.85       │ /services/checkout/**       │
│ Kubernetes      │ team=payments   │ 0.80       │ Label on deployment         │
│ service.yaml    │ payments-team   │ 1.00       │ service.team field          │
└─────────────────┴─────────────────┴────────────┴─────────────────────────────┘

On-Call Contact:
  Name:     Jane Smith
  Email:    jane.smith@company.com
  Slack:    @jsmith
  Schedule: payments-team-primary

Escalation Path:
  1. payments-team-primary (0-15 min)
  2. payments-team-secondary (15-30 min)
  3. payments-team-manager (30+ min)

JSON Output

nthlayer ownership service.yaml --format json

{
  "service": "checkout-service",
  "primary_owner": {
    "team": "payments-team",
    "confidence": 0.95,
    "source": "backstage"
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "source": "backstage",
      "owner": "payments-team",
      "confidence": 0.95
    }
  ],
  "on_call": {
    "name": "Jane Smith",
    "email": "jane.smith@company.com"
  }
}

Demo Mode

nthlayer ownership service.yaml --demo

Ownership Sources

Backstage Catalog (0.95 confidence)

Reads spec.owner from Backstage catalog entities:

# catalog-info.yaml
apiVersion: backstage.io/v1alpha1
kind: Component
metadata:
  name: checkout-service
spec:
  owner: payments-team

PagerDuty (0.90 confidence)

Queries PagerDuty for: - Service escalation policy owners - On-call schedules - Team membership

CODEOWNERS (0.85 confidence)

Parses GitHub/GitLab CODEOWNERS file:

# CODEOWNERS
/services/checkout/** @acme/payments

Kubernetes Labels (0.80 confidence)

Reads labels from Kubernetes resources:

metadata:
  labels:
    team: payments
    owner: payments-team

service.yaml (1.00 confidence)

Explicit declaration in the service file:

service:
  name: checkout-service
  team: payments-team

Confidence Resolution

When multiple sources provide ownership information:

  1. Unanimous - All sources agree: highest confidence
  2. Majority - Most sources agree: weighted average
  3. Conflict - Sources disagree: lowest confidence, requires resolution

Use Cases

Incident Response

# Find who to page during an incident
nthlayer ownership failing-service.yaml --format json | jq '.on_call'

Dependency Notification

# Notify owners of affected services before deployment
for dep in $(nthlayer blast-radius service.yaml --format json | jq -r '.affected_services[].name'); do
  owner=$(nthlayer ownership $dep.yaml --format json | jq -r '.primary_owner.team')
  echo "Notifying $owner about $dep"
done

Ownership Audit

# Find services with unclear ownership
nthlayer ownership service.yaml --format json | jq 'select(.primary_owner.confidence < 0.8)'

See Also