DOCA Telemetry

Where to start: This skill assumes DOCA is already installed and the user is doing hands-on hardware-counter-reader work — opening a per-domain doca_telemetry_<domain> context against a doca_dev and reading the latest hardware-counter snapshot for that domain. The library is the counter-READER half of DOCA telemetry; it is NOT a NetFlow / IPFIX collector and NOT a generic schema-event consumer (the bundle previously framed it that way and that framing was wrong — there is no NetFlow / IPFIX / local-socket transport surface in the public header). Open TASKS.md if the user wants to do something (configure / build / modify / run / test / debug); open CAPABILITIES.md when the question is which hardware-counter domains can this device read on this install (PCC, DPA, DIAG, ADP_RETX, PHY, PCI). If the user has not installed DOCA yet, route to doca-setup first. If the user is confused about whether they want this library (HW-counter reader on a doca_dev) or doca-telemetry-exporter (the publisher / export side, which is a separate library and publishes structured telemetry / labeled metrics / OTLP logs), read the reader-vs-exporter role split in CAPABILITIES.md ## Capabilities and modes BEFORE configuring anything; mixing the two is the load-bearing first-app failure for this skill. If the user is asking about DOCA Telemetry Service (DTS) as deployed, route to doca-public-knowledge-map non-goals — DTS is out of scope for this bundle.

Audience

This skill serves external developers building applications that READ DOCA hardware counters from a doca_dev through one or more of the six per-domain DOCA Telemetry reader libraries (doca_telemetry_pcc / _dpa / _diag / _adp_retx / _phy / _pci) — i.e., users whose application code calls doca_telemetry_<domain>_* (directly in C/C++, or through FFI / bindings from another language) to open a per-domain context on a doca_dev, configure the per-domain sample window, and read the hardware-counter snapshot for that domain. It is not for NVIDIA developers contributing to DOCA Telemetry itself, and it is not for users writing the publishing / export side — that is doca-telemetry-exporter, a separate library and a separate skill.

Language scope. DOCA Telemetry's per-domain reader libraries ship as a C surface with pkg-config module name doca-telemetry. The shipped samples are written in C. C and C++ readers are the canonical case; the worked examples in TASKS.md assume that path. Other-language readers (Rust, Go, Python, …) consume the same *.so through FFI or language-specific bindings; the skill's contribution in that case is to keep the reader-vs-exporter distinction, the per- domain cap-query-first discipline, the per-domain DOCA Core lifecycle on the doca_dev, the sample-window discipline, and the error-taxonomy guidance language-neutral, and to route the agent to the public per-domain C ABI as the authoritative surface that any wrapper will eventually call.

When to load this skill

Load this skill when the user is doing hands-on DOCA Telemetry hardware-counter-reader work, in any language. Concretely:

• Picking the right per-domain header for the counters the user wants (doca_telemetry_pcc.h for Programmable Congestion Control counters, _dpa.h for DPA counters, _diag.h for generic device diagnostic counters, _adp_retx.h for ADP retransmit counters, _phy.h for physical-layer counters, _pci.h for PCI / PCIe counters) and confirming the device supports it via the per-domain _cap_is_supported(devinfo) query — except _pci, which has no single _cap_is_supported and instead exposes per-feature caps like doca_telemetry_pci_cap_management_info_is_supported / _cap_perf_counters_1_is_supported.
• Opening a per-domain doca_telemetry_<domain> context on a doca_dev, walking the per-domain lifecycle (doca_telemetry_<domain>_create(dev) → per-domain setters → doca_telemetry_<domain>_start), configuring the per-domain sample window, and reading the hardware-counter snapshot for that domain. Note this is a per-domain _create/_start surface, not the generic doca_ctx_* progress-engine lifecycle.
• Reading the device + library capability surface for the per-domain reader via the doca_telemetry_<domain>_cap_is_supported query before assuming a particular counter family is available on this install / this doca_dev.
• Handling per-domain DOCA_ERROR_* returns from a counter read (lifecycle vs. device-doesn't-support-this-domain vs. per-domain AGAIN-means-snapshot-not-ready vs. permission / driver) and the per-read status reported back to the application.
• Choosing between DOCA Telemetry (hardware-counter READER) and an adjacent option: doca-telemetry-exporter when the user actually wants to PUBLISH / EXPORT the counter values (OTLP / Prometheus / labeled metrics); doca-log when plain structured stdout logging is enough; a generic Prometheus / OpenTelemetry client library when the counter source is a non-DOCA program; the externally- productized DOCA Telemetry Service (DTS, out of scope) when the user wants a turnkey aggregator.
• Designing or extending non-C bindings (Rust, Go, Python, …) that wrap the per-domain reader C ABI — for the reader-vs- exporter distinction, the per-domain cap-query-first rule, the per-domain doca_dev lifecycle, the sample-window discipline, and the error rules the wrapper must honor.

Do not load this skill for general DOCA orientation, install of DOCA itself, the publishing / export side (doca-telemetry-exporter has its own skill), the externally-productized DOCA Telemetry Service (DTS — out of scope), or non-reader library questions. For those, use doca-public-knowledge-map.

What this skill provides

This is a thin loader. The body keeps only the orientation needed to pick the right next file. The substantive hardware-counter-reader material lives in two companion files:

• CAPABILITIES.md — what the per-domain readers can express on this install: the reader-vs-exporter role-split rule, the six shipped sub-libraries (doca_telemetry_pcc / _dpa / _diag / _adp_retx / _phy / _pci) and which counter family each one exposes, the per-domain DOCA Core lifecycle on a doca_dev, the per-domain capability query (doca_telemetry_<domain>_cap_is_supported(devinfo)), the reader error taxonomy (mapped onto the cross-library DOCA_ERROR_* set, with the NOT_SUPPORTED-means-domain- not-exposed-on-this-device rule and the AGAIN-means- snapshot-not-ready rule called out explicitly), the observability surface (per-read status + per-domain cap- query snapshot at configure time), the safety policy that gates per-domain reads behind the cap-query result, and the path-selection rule against doca-telemetry-exporter, doca-log, and standalone Prometheus / OpenTelemetry / DTS.
• TASKS.md — step-by-step workflows for the six in-scope reader verbs: configure, build, modify, run, test, debug. Plus a Deferred task verbs block that points out-of-scope questions at the right next skill.

The skill assumes a host where DOCA is already installed at the standard location and a doca_dev is open against a BlueField DPU or ConnectX NIC that the per-domain cap-query returns DOCA_SUCCESS for. It does not cover installing DOCA — that path goes through doca-setup — and it does not cover writing the publishing / export side, which is doca-telemetry-exporter.

Loading order

1. Read this SKILL.md first to confirm the user's question is in scope (specifically, that the user wants to READ a per-domain hardware counter via the per-domain reader API on a doca_dev — not PUBLISH counters, which is doca-telemetry-exporter; not deploy DTS, which is out of scope; and not stand up a NetFlow / IPFIX collector, which this library does not expose a surface for).
2. For the reader-vs-exporter rule, the six per-domain sub-libraries, the per-domain DOCA Core lifecycle on a doca_dev, the per-domain capability query, the error taxonomy (including the NOT_SUPPORTED-means-domain- not-exposed-on-this-device rule and the AGAIN-means- snapshot-not-ready rule), observability, the safety policy, and the path-selection rule, see CAPABILITIES.md.
3. For step-by-step workflows — configure, build, modify, run, test, debug — see TASKS.md.

Both companion files cross-link to each other, doca-version for the canonical version-handling rules, and doca-public-knowledge-map whenever the right answer is "look it up in the public docs or the installed package layout" rather than "reader-specific guidance".

Example questions this skill answers well

See references/details.md.

What this skill deliberately does not ship

See references/details.md.

Related skills

See references/details.md.