Signals
Orion's automatic anomaly feed โ it scans your prism metrics for unusual week-over-week moves and surfaces them by severity.
When to use it โ As your daily "what changed?" check, or any time you want Orion to look across every metric at once instead of opening prisms one by one.
Where to find it โ Signals in the left sidebar (
/signals).Who can use it โ Tracer, Weaver, and Luminary. Anyone can run a scan and dismiss a signal; deleting a signal permanently requires Weaver or above.
Signals does the watching for you. Instead of you defining a rule, Orion takes every metric that powers a saved prism, pulls a long weekly history for it, and decides โ statistically โ whether the most recent completed week is unusual. Each unusual metric becomes a signal in the feed, ranked by how serious the move is.
This is different from Alerts, where you set the rule (for example, "tell me when revenue drops more than 10% week-over-week"). Signals needs no setup at all: it finds the anomalies you did not think to ask about.
Overview
When a scan runs, Orion looks at each metric's weekly series and compares the latest complete week against the weeks before it. It measures two things: the week-over-week (WoW) percentage change and the z-score (how many standard deviations the latest week sits from the recent average). If either crosses a threshold, the metric becomes a signal.
Every signal card shows:
- The metric, its current value, and the WoW arrow (up or down).
- A severity badge โ Critical, Watch, Positive, or Info.
- Comparison chips: WoW %, YoY %, and Z-score (in ฯ).
- Orion's analysis โ a plain-language statement of what was observed, framed as a flag to investigate rather than a confirmed cause.
- A root cause breakdown (where available) showing which dimension values drove the change.
- Open in Discover to jump straight to the prism, and Dismiss to clear the card.
Signals stay in the feed for seven days after they are scanned, until you dismiss them.
When to use it
- Your morning data check โ open Signals first to see everything that moved overnight before diving into individual prisms.
- After a launch, promo, or release โ run Scan now to immediately see how your metrics responded.
- Catching the unknowns โ Signals surfaces moves in metrics you would never have written an alert for, which is exactly where surprises hide.
- Triage โ the severity ranking tells you what to look at first. Start at Critical, then Watch.
Reach for Alerts instead when you already know the exact condition you care about and want a notification every time it happens.
Concepts
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Signal | One metric that Orion flagged as anomalous in a scan. It is detected automatically โ you do not create it. |
| Scan | A pass over all of your prism-backed metrics. Run on demand with Scan now, and automatically once per day. |
| Severity | How serious the move is: Critical, Watch, Positive, or Info (see below). |
| WoW % | Week-over-week change โ the latest complete week versus the week before it. |
| YoY % | Year-over-year change โ the latest week versus the closest week about a year earlier (shown when history allows). |
| Z-score | How many standard deviations the latest week is from its recent average. A larger absolute z-score means a more unusual move. |
| Completeness guard | If the most recent week has far fewer rows than usual, Orion treats it as incomplete and excludes it, so a partial week (for example, one order so far) is not mistaken for a collapse. Comparisons are always complete-week to complete-week. |
Severity tiers
Orion assigns severity from the size of the move. A move is Critical or Positive when it is large (a WoW change of about 20% or more, or a z-score of about 2.5ฯ or more); a downward large move is Critical, an upward large move is Positive. Smaller-but-still-unusual moves (around 10% WoW, or about 1.8ฯ) are flagged as Watch. Anything below those thresholds is not surfaced as an anomaly.
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Critical | A large adverse move โ a sharp drop worth investigating first. |
| Watch | A moderate, unusual move that is worth keeping an eye on. |
| Positive | A large favourable move (a sharp increase) โ good news, surfaced so you can understand the driver. |
| Info | A low-severity flag. |
The feed is sorted by severity (Critical, then Watch, then Positive, then Info), and within a tier by the size of the WoW change.
Getting started
Open Signals from the left sidebar. The page has three tabs:
- Signals โ Orion's anomaly feed (the focus of this page).
- Alert Rules โ the rules you define yourself (see Alerts).
- History โ a log of when your alert rules fired.
If you have never run a scan, the Signals tab shows a "No scan results yet" state with a Scan now button.
Step-by-step
Open Signals
Click Signals in the left sidebar. You land on the Signals tab.
Run a scan (or wait for the daily one)
Click Scan now in the top-right. Orion scans every prism-backed metric and the button shows Scanningโฆ until it finishes. You do not have to run it manually โ a scan also runs automatically each day at 6:00am UTC.
Read the feed top-down
Signals appear ordered by severity. Start with Critical cards, then Watch. Each card shows the current value, the WoW move, and the comparison chips (WoW, YoY, Z-score).
Read Orion's analysis
The Orion's analysis block states what was observed in plain language. It deliberately stops at the observation and reminds you to check possible drivers โ it does not assert a cause.
Check the root cause breakdown
Where a dimensional breakdown is available, the card shows Root cause by <dimension> with the top contributing values and how much each moved. Use it to see which segment drove the change.
Investigate in Discover
Click Open in Discover โ to open the underlying prism and explore the metric yourself โ change the grain, add filters, or drill in.
Dismiss when handled
Click Dismiss to remove a signal from the feed once you have looked into it. Dismissed signals are hidden from the live feed.
On the signal detail page
Opening a signal's detail view gives you the metric header (value, threshold, domain, node), Orion's description, and three actions:
- Acknowledge โ marks the signal as seen.
- Snooze 24h โ temporarily suppresses it for a day.
- Ask Orion โ opens Orion pre-filled with a question about this anomaly so you can investigate conversationally.
The detail page also shows Recommended Actions โ ranked suggestions for responding to the anomaly. Choosing Take action logs the choice to your Decision Trail (see Decisions). An Alert History table at the bottom lists previous times this metric was flagged.
Examples
Say you have a saved prism for Weekly Revenue built on your orders domain. On Monday morning you open Signals and run a scan. Orion pulls the weekly revenue series, sees the latest complete week down 24% versus the prior week and well outside the normal range, and produces a Critical signal:
Critical โ Weekly Revenue down 24.0% (week of 2026-06-15)
Current 182k โ 24.0%
vs 240k last week ยท 235k 30d avg
WoW -24.0% YoY +3.2% Z-score -2.7ฯ
โฆ Orion's analysis
Observed: Weekly Revenue decreased 24.0% for the completed week of
2026-06-15 vs the prior week, well outside the normal range
(4โ8 week average โ 235k). This is a flag to investigate, not a
confirmed cause โ possible drivers (demand, pricing, returns,
tracking) are worth checking before acting.
Root cause by store_id
store_42 โโโโโโโโโโโ -41k
store_18 โโโโ -12k
store_07 โโ -5kThe root cause breakdown points at store_42 as the biggest single contributor, so you click Open in Discover โ, filter to that store, and confirm before raising it with the team.
The numbers Orion reports โ current value, WoW %, YoY %, z-score, and the dimensional deltas โ are computed from your warehouse data. The cause is yours to confirm. Orion states the observation as fact and leaves the diagnosis to you.
Best practices
- Triage by severity. Work Critical first, then Watch. Positive signals are worth a look too โ understanding a good surprise is as useful as understanding a bad one.
- Open in Discover before acting. The card is a flag, not a verdict. Confirm the move and the driver in the prism before you escalate.
- Keep prisms tidy. Signals only scans metrics behind saved prisms. The more of your important metrics live in well-defined prisms, the more complete the feed.
- Dismiss what you have handled. A clean feed makes the next scan easy to read.
- Use Alerts for the conditions you already know. Signals finds the unexpected; Alerts guarantee you hear about the specific thresholds you care about. Use both.
Tips
A partial latest week will not show up as a collapse. Orion's completeness guard drops the most recent week when its row count is far below the typical week, and compares complete weeks only โ so an in-progress week with just a few rows is not read as a near-total drop.
Common mistakes
Expecting signals with no prisms. A scan only covers metrics behind saved prisms that have a metric and a date field. An empty feed often just means you have not built the relevant prism yet.
Confusing Signals with Alerts. You cannot create a signal by hand โ Orion detects them. To get notified on a specific rule you choose, use Alerts instead.
Troubleshooting
| Symptom | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| "No scan results yet" with a Scan now button | No scan has been run for this workspace | Click Scan now, or wait for the daily 6:00am UTC scan. |
| "All metrics look normal" after a scan | No metric crossed the anomaly thresholds | Nothing to do โ everything is within its normal range. The next scan runs at 6:00am UTC. |
| A signal you expected is missing | The metric did not cross the thresholds, the prism lacks a metric or date field, or the latest week was excluded as incomplete | Confirm the prism has a metric and a date field; check the move is large enough (around 10% WoW or more) to be flagged. |
| Scan now finishes but the feed is still empty | No prisms with a usable metric and date field, or the metric's warehouse query could not run | Build/save a prism in Discover; confirm its connection and table are reachable. |
| No Root cause by โฆ breakdown on a card | Dimensional breakdown is computed for Postgres/Redshift-backed prisms; other warehouses are not broken down | Use Open in Discover โ and break the metric down by dimension yourself. |
| A signal keeps reappearing after each scan | The anomaly is still present in the latest data, so each scan re-detects it | Investigate and resolve the underlying move, or Dismiss the card if it is expected. |
Related pages
- Alerts โ define your own threshold rules and get notified when they fire.
- Data health โ monitor freshness and quality of the data feeding your metrics.
- Discover โ explore the prism behind any signal.
- Prisms โ the saved views that Signals scans.
- Decisions โ where actions taken from a signal are logged.