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Color legend

This page documents what each color means on the service graph, the grid, and inside a trace.

Color law

One vocabulary applies at every scale: a service node, a connection between two services, the aggregate blocks on the grid, and an individual span or log inside a trace.

Color Meaning Applies to
Green Healthy Service nodes, grid aggregate blocks, spans, logs (not edges: healthy edges are translucent glass, see below)
Orange Warning Log Aggregate Block (a warning log, when no error is present); log lines at warning level
Red Failure. The thing is there and it is broken Service nodes (burning texture when on fire), connections/edges, grid aggregate blocks, spans, logs
Black Absence. The thing should be there and is not Service nodes ("black hole" / phantom services), Trace Aggregate Block (a trace with a missing span)
Grey Idle. Present but not currently active Service nodes, grid aggregate blocks
White Hover / mouse-over highlight only. Not a health state Grid aggregate blocks, other highlightable objects

Red distinguishes failure from absence: red means the thing exists and failed; black means the thing was expected and never arrived or never reported. This distinction holds at every layer (service, trace, span).

One overlap applies to node color: an idle service renders grey, unless it is a phantom (absent) service, in which case it renders black rather than grey.

Per-surface breakdown

Service node (service graph)

State Color Detail
Healthy Green Glowing ring
Unhealthy Red Glowing ring; a service genuinely on fire also renders a burning texture in the center
Idle Grey Present, not currently active
Phantom (absent) Black Expected service that never reported; rendered as a void ("black hole") in the topology

Connection / edge (service graph)

Edges use their own two-state scheme, separate from node health. There is no green edge.

State Color
Healthy / default Translucent glass
Error on that connection Translucent red

Edge thickness encodes traffic volume over time (thicker = more traffic) and is independent of color.

Service platform neon

State Color
Service is healthy Green
Service has a problem Red

The platform neon reflects the health of the service you are standing on.

Grid aggregate blocks

On the grid, a trace occupies one position as two adjacent aggregate blocks (see Glossary): a Trace Aggregate Block holding all spans that share the trace ID, and a Log Aggregate Block holding all logs with that trace ID. Their color is independent: the Trace Aggregate Block reflects its spans, the Log Aggregate Block reflects its logs.

Each block takes the color of the highest-severity status it contains. A single error span turns the whole Trace Aggregate Block red. A single warning log turns the Log Aggregate Block orange. If a Log Aggregate Block contains both a warning and an error, it is red, because error outranks warning.

State Color Applies to
Healthy Green Both aggregate blocks
Warning Orange Log Aggregate Block (a warning log, when no error is present)
Error Red Either block (an error span or an error log)
Absence (missing span) Black Trace Aggregate Block (a span expected in the trace did not arrive)
Idle Grey Both aggregate blocks
Hover highlight White Not a health state

The severity order is error (red) > warning (orange) > normal (green). A block always shows its worst contained status.

Trace Aggregate Block height grows with the combined duration of all the trace's spans (a taller block took longer to complete) and is separate from color. Height and color read together: a tall red block is a slow, failed trace; a black block is a trace missing a span.

The block's color and shape are what you read from a distance. The error text and trace details are not printed on the block face; hover the block for its tooltip to see them (and press F6 to copy).

Diagnostics cube: spans

State Color
Healthy span Green
Errored span Red

Diagnostics log levels

Inside the Diagnostics cube, the logs wall color-codes each log line by log level. This is a separate scale from the grid/graph health-state colors above.

Log level Color
Error Red
Warning Yellow
Info White / grey
Debug (one of the five levels; rounds out the scale)
Trace (one of the five levels; rounds out the scale)

Inside the Diagnostics cube, a warning log line is yellow. On the grid, a warning rolls up to orange on the Log Aggregate Block (when no error is present). Warning never appears on the service graph, which has no warning state.