Filter Noise with Superlog Issue Filters

By default, every ERROR-level span and log record that arrives in your project is eligible to become a Superlog issue and trigger an AI investigation. Issue filters let you take back control: exclude patterns that are well-understood noise, or restrict investigations to only the signals you actually care about.

How filters work

Issue filters operate on clauses — simple { key, value } equality rules that match against OpenTelemetry attribute key/value pairs. There are four buckets, applied separately to spans and logs:

Bucket	Effect
`excludeSpans`	Spans matching ANY clause are dropped and never become issues
`excludeLogs`	Log records matching ANY clause are dropped and never become issues
`includeSpans`	When non-empty, a span MUST match at least one clause to become an issue
`includeLogs`	When non-empty, a log record MUST match at least one clause to become an issue

Excludes always win over includes. If an event matches an exclude clause it is dropped, even if it also matches an include clause.

Filters are per-project and are evaluated in the ingestion worker — filtered events are dropped before any incident or issue is created, so they do not consume AI investigation capacity.

Clause structure

Each clause is an object with two fields:

{ "key": "service.name", "value": "health-checker" }

The key is any OTel attribute name and the value is the exact string it must equal. You can add up to 20 clauses per bucket.

Configuring filters

In the UI

Go to Settings → Issue Filters in your project. You can add and remove clauses for each of the four buckets and preview results before saving.

Via MCP tools

The MCP server exposes three tools for managing issue filters:

Tool	Description
`get_issue_filter`	Read the current filter configuration
`update_issue_filter`	Update one or more buckets. Buckets you omit are left unchanged; pass `[]` to clear a bucket
`preview_issue_filter`	Preview which recent ERROR events would still become issues under a candidate filter, without saving

update_issue_filter replaces the bucket(s) you pass. To add clauses without losing existing ones, call get_issue_filter first and include the existing clauses in your update.

Via REST API

GET  /api/projects/:projectId/ingest-filters
PUT  /api/projects/:projectId/ingest-filters

Preview before saving

Always preview filter changes before committing them. The preview_issue_filter MCP tool evaluates the candidate filter against ERROR events from the last 24 hours and returns a sample of events that would still become issues. This lets you confirm that your exclude clauses remove the noise you expect without accidentally silencing real incidents.

# Example MCP call (pseudo-code)
preview_issue_filter({
  excludeSpans: [{ key: "http.route", value: "/health" }]
})
# Returns: { config: { ... }, events: [ ... up to 10 sample events ... ] }

Examples

Exclude health check spans

Health checks generate a steady stream of ERROR-free spans that can still create noise. Drop them entirely:

{
  "excludeSpans": [
    { "key": "http.route", "value": "/health" },
    { "key": "http.route", "value": "/readyz" }
  ]
}

Exclude a noisy background worker

A known-flaky job that you’ve decided not to fix right now:

{
  "excludeSpans": [
    { "key": "service.name", "value": "legacy-sync-worker" }
  ]
}

Restrict investigations to specific services

When you only want your AI agent to investigate errors in the orders and payments services:

{
  "includeSpans": [
    { "key": "service.name", "value": "orders" },
    { "key": "service.name", "value": "payments" }
  ]
}

Combine excludes and includes

Investigate only orders and payments errors, but skip internal health probes in those services:

{
  "includeSpans": [
    { "key": "service.name", "value": "orders" },
    { "key": "service.name", "value": "payments" }
  ],
  "excludeSpans": [
    { "key": "http.route", "value": "/health" }
  ]
}

A span from orders that matches /health is still excluded because excludes win. For the full MCP tool reference, see MCP tools.

Get Started

Core Concepts

Integrations

Features

Configuration

Filter Noise with Superlog Issue Filters

How filters work

Clause structure

Configuring filters

In the UI

Via MCP tools

Via REST API

Preview before saving

Examples

Exclude health check spans

Exclude a noisy background worker

Restrict investigations to specific services

Combine excludes and includes

​How filters work

​Clause structure

​Configuring filters

​In the UI

​Via MCP tools

​Via REST API

​Preview before saving

​Examples

​Exclude health check spans

​Exclude a noisy background worker

​Restrict investigations to specific services

​Combine excludes and includes

How filters work

Clause structure

Configuring filters

In the UI

Via MCP tools

Via REST API

Preview before saving

Examples

Exclude health check spans

Exclude a noisy background worker

Restrict investigations to specific services

Combine excludes and includes