brendangregg-use-tsa
Methodical performance troubleshooting and root-cause analysis with Brendan Gregg's USE and TSA methods, plus evidence-backed RCA and postmortem reports.
Profile →npx skills add sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills --skill brendangregg-use-tsa --agent claude-code
Same command for any agent — swap --agent for codex, cursor, copilot.
Weekly change comes from our own snapshots, not the repository page — it measures attention, not adoption.
# Brendan Gregg USE+TSA Performance Analysis ## Overview A fixed, evidence-first procedure for system performance debugging, root-cause analysis (RCA), and incident reporting, distilled from Brendan Gregg's published methodologies. Instead of running whichever commands happen to be familiar, the agent poses questions first and then finds metrics to answer them: the USE Method (Utilization, Saturation, Errors) sweeps every resource, the TSA Method (Thread State Analysis) decomposes thread time, and off-CPU analysis plus flame graphs drill into what the sweeps find. Every investigation ends in a structured triage note, RCA report, or postmortem where each claim traces to a command and its output. This skill adapts material from the community repository [thecsdoctor/brendangregg-use-tsa-skill](https://github.com/thecsdoctor/brendangregg-use-tsa-skill) (full checklists, reference library, and report templates live there). ## When to Use This Skill - Use when a server, VM, or container is "slow" and the cause is unknown - Use when latency or throughput regressed after a deploy, config change, or load shift - Use when CPU, memory, disk, or network metrics look abnormal and need interpret
- Overview
- When to Use This Skill
- How It Works
- Step 0: Problem Statement
- Step 1: 60-Second Triage (Linux)
- Step 2: USE Sweep (resource-oriented)
- Step 3: TSA Sweep (thread-oriented)
- Step 4: Drill Down
- Step 5: Confirm Root Cause
- Step 6: Fix and Verify
- Step 7: Report
- Examples
- Example 1: "This server feels slow"
- Example 2: Post-deploy latency regression
uptime # load trend (includes uninterruptible I/O on Linux) dmesg | tail # kernel errors: oom-killer, SYN flooding, hardware vmstat 1 # r > CPU count = CPU saturation; si/so = swapping; wa = disk mpstat -P ALL 1 # per-CPU imbalance (single hot CPU = single-threaded app) pidstat 1 # per-process CPU over time iostat -xz 1 # await (app-suffered latency), avgqu-sz, %util free -m # memory; buffers/cache near zero hurts sar -n DEV 1 # NIC throughput vs link limit sar -n TCP,ETCP 1 # active/passive connections, retransmits top # spot variable load
What does the brendangregg-use-tsa skill do?
Methodical performance troubleshooting and root-cause analysis with Brendan Gregg's USE and TSA methods, plus evidence-backed RCA and postmortem reports.
How do I install it?
Run `npx skills add sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills --skill brendangregg-use-tsa --agent claude-code` — it drops the skill into your project so the agent can pick it up. Swap the --agent value for codex, cursor or copilot if you use one of those.
Where does this skill come from?
From sickn33/agentic-awesome-skills, a repository with 44,414 stars. We read it straight from the repository tree rather than a submitted listing, so what you see here is what is actually published.
Is a popular skill a good skill?
Not necessarily. Stars measure attention, not adoption — a repository can trend for a week and be abandoned. That is why we show the weekly change from our own snapshots next to the total, instead of a single flattering number.