# Build brief — a focused alternative to Axiom

> **Verdict:** Partly, if you narrow it · **Buildability:** 62/100 · **Category:** Monitoring
> **Source:** https://www.canitbevibecoded.com/axiom
> Independent editorial assessment from Can It Be Vibe Coded? Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or derived from Axiom. Verify current pricing and capabilities before acting.

## Context

**Axiom** — Ingest bounded logs, search them, and retain a compact local event store. It currently costs $25/mo.

The core loop is buildable, but a dependable replacement becomes a substantially larger project. For Axiom, ingest bounded logs, search them, and retain a compact local event store. The hard boundary is high-performance cloud storage, query engine, integrations, and managed operations, plus independent infrastructure and reliable alerting.

This brief describes a focused, single-operator replacement for the part of Axiom that is genuinely reproducible. It is deliberately narrower than the product it replaces, and it says so in writing. Build the useful core; do not pretend to have rebuilt the rest.

## What you are building

Ingest bounded logs and error events, search them, retain a compact local event store, alert through one channel, and publish an honest status page.

- Build a focused single-user workflow with real persistence, search, and export.
- A responsive interface with real empty, loading, success, and error states.

## Requirements

### Functional

- Server outside the monitored failure domain.
- PostgreSQL.
- Optional ClickHouse.
- Public HTTPS.

### Data and integrations

- Email or webhook destination.

Each of these needs a real account, credential, or quota. Set them up before writing feature code.

### Non-functional

- Accessibility: semantic markup, labelled controls, visible focus, and reduced-motion support.
- Security: server-side secrets, validated input, and no credentials in the client bundle.
- Reliability: retries with backoff on external calls, and a clear failure state when a provider is down.
- Portability: the operator can export their data and leave without losing it.

## Implementation brief

Build a personal replacement for Axiom in an empty repository.
Use Go, PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, a Next.js 15 dashboard, and Docker Compose; do not offer alternative stacks.
The core loop is: ingest bounded logs and error events, search them, retain a compact local event store, alert through one channel, and publish an honest status page.
Make the first run work locally with one documented command.
Store all user data locally by default and make export straightforward.
Put secrets in .env, ship .env.example, and never commit credentials.
Implement HTTP, TCP, DNS, TLS-expiry, and heartbeat checks with explicit timeout and retry policies.
Run checks from one independently hosted worker and store raw results plus incident state transitions.
Send deduplicated alerts to email or one webhook destination with recovery notifications.
Create services, maintenance windows, incidents, subscribers, and a public status page.
Add bounded event ingestion for application errors with sampling and sensitive-field scrubbing.
Provide health checks, retention settings, exports, backups, and a test-alert function.
Include clear empty, loading, success, and recoverable error states.
Add input validation, safe filenames, and graceful handling of unavailable APIs.
Write focused tests for the core transformation and one end-to-end happy path.
Create a README with setup, architecture, permissions, data location, and backup steps.
Do not add accounts, billing, telemetry, analytics, or a hosted control plane.
Deliberately leave out a worldwide probe network.
Deliberately leave out phone, SMS, and managed on-call escalation.
Deliberately leave out unbounded logs, enterprise observability, and vendor-operated incident response.
Finish by running the tests and listing the exact commands used.

## Delivery standard

- Inspect the repository first, then write a short implementation plan before writing code.
- Deliver the smallest complete end-to-end workflow first; every primary control must work against persisted data.
- Use real validation and storage; never substitute fake dashboards, decorative controls, hard-coded success states, or mock integrations.
- Include responsive layouts plus genuine empty, loading, success, validation, and failure states.
- Keep secrets server-side in environment variables, provide .env.example, and never commit credentials or user data.
- Add structured logs around every external call and return actionable errors without leaking sensitive details.
- Write unit tests for the core logic and one automated test of the main user journey.
- Finish with a README covering setup, architecture, data location, backups, tests, deployment, and known limitations.

## Acceptance criteria

- [ ] A clean install starts the app using only the README and .env.example.
- [ ] The primary journey works from first visit through saved result, reload, edit, export, and deletion where applicable.
- [ ] Invalid input, missing configuration, provider failure, and an empty database each have a usable state.
- [ ] The interface works at 390px and 1440px, is keyboard navigable, and shows visible focus on every control.
- [ ] Tests, type checking, linting, and a production build all pass with no ignored failures.
- [ ] No part of the interface implies a live integration, security guarantee, or scale capability that was not actually built and verified.

## Non-goals

Do not build these, and do not claim to have replaced them:

- High-performance cloud storage, query engine, integrations, and managed operations.
- Global probe network.
- Phone and SMS delivery.
- Massive retention.
- Reliability at the vendor's scale is an operations problem, not a prompt.

## What you still own after launch

- Run migrations, backups, restores, and dependency updates.
- Test the critical journey after every model, API, or hosting change.
- Monitor failures and fix the edge cases a first prompt will miss.

## Risk

**Operational risk.** The code is achievable; dependable data, integrations, and ongoing operations are the real cost.

Editorial confidence in this assessment: medium. No independent one-shot implementation is linked yet.

## Prior art

Working open-source software you can read, fork, or borrow from before starting:

- [Uptime Kuma](https://github.com/louislam/uptime-kuma) — Popular open-source uptime monitoring dashboard with many check types

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