NetClaw Adds Splunk and Datadog: Enterprise Observability Through Natural Language
Your logs and metrics, accessible through conversation. NetClaw now integrates with both Splunk and Datadog, bringing enterprise-grade observability to network engineers through natural language. Query terabytes of logs, explore metrics, and investigate issues—all without writing SPL or navigating complex dashboards.
The Observability Gap
Network engineers live in a world of distributed systems. When something breaks, the evidence is scattered across:
- Syslog servers
- SNMP traps
- Flow collectors
- Application logs
- Infrastructure metrics
Splunk and Datadog are where this data converges. Now NetClaw can query it directly.
Splunk Integration: 3 Skills, Full SPL Power
splunk-search
Run searches and analyze results through conversation:
Search Splunk for "connection refused" errors in the last hour
Find all syslog messages from 10.0.0.0/8 with severity error
Search for BGP state changes across all routers today
Run this SPL: index=network sourcetype=syslog | stats count by host
Capabilities:
- Ad-hoc SPL queries
- Time-bounded searches
- Field extraction and filtering
- Result summarization
splunk-indexes
Understand your data landscape:
List all Splunk indexes
Show details for the network-logs index
What's the data volume in the firewall index?
Which indexes contain Cisco syslog data?
splunk-saved
Leverage existing institutional knowledge:
List all saved searches related to network
Run the "Daily BGP Summary" saved search
Show the schedule for the "Firewall Denies Report"
What saved searches exist for security events?
Datadog Integration: Metrics, Monitors, and More
Datadog brings infrastructure metrics, APM traces, and intelligent alerting. NetClaw exposes this through intuitive queries:
Metrics and Dashboards
Show CPU metrics for all network devices
What's the interface utilization on core-rtr-01?
List dashboards tagged with "network"
Show the Network Health dashboard
Monitors and Alerts
List all critical monitors in alert state
Show monitors for the network team
What triggered the "High Latency" alert?
List monitors with "BGP" in the name
Infrastructure and Logs
Search Datadog logs for "authentication failed"
Show all hosts tagged environment:production
List infrastructure metrics for network devices
What events occurred in the last hour?
Quick Setup
Splunk Configuration
# Splunk Enterprise or Cloud
export SPLUNK_HOST="https://your-splunk-instance:8089"
export SPLUNK_TOKEN="your-api-token"
# For Splunk Cloud
export SPLUNK_CLOUD_HOST="your-instance.splunkcloud.com"
Datadog Configuration
export DD_API_KEY="your-api-key"
export DD_APP_KEY="your-app-key"
export DD_SITE="datadoghq.com" # or datadoghq.eu, etc.
Real-World Investigation
Here’s how a network engineer might investigate an outage:
1. Initial Alert
netclaw: Show me all critical Datadog monitors in alert state
2. Gather Context
netclaw: Search Splunk for errors on core-rtr-01 in the last 30 minutes
3. Correlate Events
netclaw: What BGP state changes occurred in Splunk today?
4. Check Metrics
netclaw: Show interface utilization metrics for core-rtr-01 from Datadog
5. Historical Pattern
netclaw: Run the "Weekly Network Anomalies" saved search in Splunk
All without leaving the terminal. All in natural language.
Integration Architecture
Both integrations use the official MCP servers:
{
"splunk-mcp": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["mcp-splunk"],
"env": {
"SPLUNK_HOST": "${SPLUNK_HOST}",
"SPLUNK_TOKEN": "${SPLUNK_TOKEN}"
}
},
"datadog-mcp": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@datadog/mcp-server"],
"env": {
"DD_API_KEY": "${DD_API_KEY}",
"DD_APP_KEY": "${DD_APP_KEY}"
}
}
}
The Complete Observability Stack
With Splunk and Datadog joining Grafana and Prometheus, NetClaw now covers the major observability platforms:
| Platform | Strength | NetClaw Skills |
|---|---|---|
| Grafana | Visualization, dashboards | 2 skills |
| Prometheus | Metrics, alerting | 2 skills |
| Datadog | Full-stack observability | 3 skills |
| Splunk | Log analytics, SIEM | 3 skills |
Network engineers can now query across platforms:
netclaw: Check Prometheus for high CPU alerts,
then search Splunk for corresponding syslogs,
and show me the Datadog dashboard for that device
What This Means
Observability tools are only as good as your ability to query them quickly. By bringing Splunk and Datadog into the NetClaw ecosystem, we’re eliminating the friction between "I need to know" and "I found the answer."
No more:
- Learning SPL syntax for one-off queries
- Navigating complex Datadog dashboards
- Context-switching between tools
- Losing investigation threads
Instead:
- Ask questions in plain English
- Get answers in seconds
- Stay in your flow
NetClaw now supports 68 MCP servers with 124 skills. Your observability stack just became conversational.
Get started at github.com/automateyournetwork/netclaw
