Why SLIs Matter More Than SLOs

SLOs get all the attention. I want to argue that your SLIs are more important. Here's the thing: an SLO is a number you pick. 99.9% uptime. 300ms p95 latency. Whatever. It's a decision . An SLI is what you're actually measuring. Is it the right signal? Does it reflect user experience? Is it gamed by caching? Those questions matter more than the target. Bad SLI, good SLO '99.9% of healthcheck requests return 200.' Looks great on paper. Means nothing to users. Your healthcheck endpoint can be up w