Core concepts
Monitors, checks, incidents and alerts: the four ideas the rest of Ferrow is built on.
Updated
Oct 20, 2026
·
3 min read
Ferrow has a small vocabulary. Knowing four words makes the rest of the docs easy to read.
Monitors
A monitor is something you want to watch: a URL, a port, a script. It has an interval and one or more regions.
Checks
A check is one run of a monitor. Every check records a result, a latency and, for HTTP monitors, the status code.
Incidents
An incident opens when a monitor fails enough checks in a row. It closes when the monitor recovers.
Alerts
An alert is a message about an incident, sent to a person or a tool by an alert rule.
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