Skip to content

Quick Start

Generate your complete reliability stack in 5 minutes.

1. Install NthLayer

pipx install nthlayer

2. Run Interactive Setup

nthlayer setup

This guides you through configuring:

  • Prometheus - For metric discovery and SLO queries
  • Grafana - For dashboard deployment (optional)
  • PagerDuty - For alerting integration (optional)

Example output: 

================================================================================
  Welcome to NthLayer!
================================================================================

Quick Setup
----------------------------------------
1. Prometheus Configuration
   Prometheus URL [http://localhost:9090]:

2. Grafana Configuration (optional)
   Configure Grafana? [Y/n]: y
   Grafana URL [http://localhost:3000]:
   API Key: ****

Testing Connections
----------------------------------------
  Prometheus (http://localhost:9090)
    [OK] Connected (Prometheus 2.45.0)

  Grafana (http://localhost:3000)
    [OK] Connected - Org: Main Org

Configuration saved to: ~/.nthlayer/config.yaml

3. Create a Service Spec

Create payment-api.yaml:

name: payment-api
tier: critical
type: api
team: payments

dependencies:
  - postgresql
  - redis

4. Generate Configs

nthlayer apply payment-api.yaml

Output: 

Generated: generated/payment-api/
├── dashboard.json       # Import to Grafana
├── alerts.yaml          # Add to Prometheus
├── slos.yaml            # OpenSLO format
└── recording-rules.yaml # Prometheus rules

5. View Your SLO Portfolio

nthlayer portfolio

================================================================================
  NthLayer SLO Portfolio
================================================================================

Organization Health: 100% (1/1 services meeting SLOs)

By Tier:
  Critical:  100%  ████████████████████  1/1 services

Next Steps