timer-sentinel 1.0.2

A simple, efficient timer for monitoring execution time and logging threshold violations

Timer Sentinel

A dead-simple, fast, and lightweight Python timer for catching slow code. Zero dependencies, optimized performance, just pure Python doing one thing well.

Why?

I built this after spending too much time debugging inconsistent latency in complex systems. Sometimes a function that should take 100ms randomly takes 5 seconds, and you need to know when and where.

This timer helped me catch those issues. Works great with Grafana + Loki for analyzing logs and creating alerts, or use the callback for whatever custom logic you need.

What it does

• ⏱️ Times your code with high precision
• 📊 Logs when it's too slow
• 🔔 Runs callbacks when thresholds are exceeded
• 🎯 Works as decorator, context manager, or manual timer
• 🔀 Supports async functions
• 🚀 Fast - optimized with __slots__, minimal overhead
• 🪶 Lightweight - zero dependencies, tiny footprint
• ⚡ Efficient - uses time.perf_counter() for microsecond precision

Install

pip install timer-sentinel

Usage

from timer_sentinel import TimerSentinel

# Context manager
with TimerSentinel(threshold=1.0, name="db_query"):
    slow_database_call()

# Decorator
@TimerSentinel(threshold=0.5)
def api_call():
    return requests.get(url)

# Async
@TimerSentinel(threshold=0.5)
async def async_operation():
    await some_io()

Real-world Examples

Catch slow database queries

@TimerSentinel(threshold=0.1, name="db_query")
def get_user(user_id):
    return db.query(f"SELECT * FROM users WHERE id={user_id}")

Integration with Grafana + Loki

Just log to your standard logger and ship logs to Loki:

import logging

logger = logging.getLogger("production")

with TimerSentinel(threshold=1.0, logger=logger, name="api_call"):
    call_external_api()

Create alerts in Grafana based on the "OVERTIME" keyword or parse execution times. Good for catching performance regressions in production.

API

TimerSentinel(
    threshold: float,              # Max time in seconds
    name: str = "",                # Timer name (uses function name if decorator)
    logger: Logger | None = None,  # Custom logger
    on_exceed_keyword: str = "OVERTIME",     # Log keyword
    on_exceed_level: int = WARNING,          # Log level
    on_exceed_callback: Callable = None,     # Callback function
    callback_args: dict = None,              # Args for callback
)

Methods:

• start() - Start timing
• end() - Stop timing
• report() - Log if threshold exceeded

Use as:

• Decorator: @TimerSentinel(...)
• Context manager: with TimerSentinel(...)
• Manual: timer.start() → timer.end() → timer.report()

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• No external dependencies

Contributing

Found a bug? Want a feature? Open an issue or PR on GitHub.

License

MIT License - do whatever you want with it.

Author

Aaron Ojeda · GitHub