# instana/robot-shop

Sample microservices application for playing with

Repository: https://github.com/instana/robot-shop
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/robot-shop
Homepage: http://instana.com/
Language: JavaScript
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Topics: microservices, distributed-tracing, performance-monitoring, robot, microservice-example
Last push: 2026-05-14T12:36:25+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 69/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 82, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3157, "days_push": 111, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1013, forks 6544 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:13.491758+00:00)

## What it is
Stan's Robot Shop is a sample polyglot microservices application (NodeJS, Java, Python, Go, PHP) simulating an e-commerce shop, built to serve as a sandbox for learning container orchestration and monitoring. It comes pre-instrumented with Instana agents for end-to-end distributed tracing and metrics, and deploys via Docker Compose or Kubernetes.

## Use cases
- learn microservices architecture with a realistic demo app
- test container orchestration and monitoring tools
- practice distributed tracing on a polyglot application
- sandbox for evaluating APM and observability platforms
- demo load testing against a microservices app
- try Kubernetes deployments with a multi-service workload

## When to choose
- you need a realistic multi-language microservices demo to deploy in Docker or Kubernetes
- you want to learn or teach observability, tracing, and monitoring techniques
- you need a sandbox app to test service meshes, load generators, or APM agents

## When to avoid
- you need a production-grade reference implementation with proper security and error handling
- you require ARM support or a fully open-source monitoring backend without an Instana account
- you want a minimal single-service example rather than a full multi-service stack

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: microservices, monitoring, tracing, developer-tools, container-orchestration
- domain: microservices, monitoring, developer-tools
- platform: cross-platform
- tags: sample-app, demo-application, distributed-tracing, observability, e-commerce-demo, instana, sandbox, polyglot, devops, containers, docker, kubernetes, linux

## Member repositories
- instana/robot-shop (main) score 69

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:13.491758+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T07:11:39.880142+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/instana/robot-shop (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:13.491758+00:00, sha 9bb67c73704b)
  - homepage: http://instana.com/ (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:28.094659+00:00, sha 783f6d44b9c9)
  - site_page: https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/pricing (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:28.104200+00:00, sha 05e0108ff9d0)
  - site_page: https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/intelligent-incident-investigation (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:28.107188+00:00, sha 796e4da9962b)
  - site_page: https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/automated-resource-optimization (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:28.109636+00:00, sha 631e420302a0)
  - site_page: https://www.ibm.com/products/instana/opentelemetry (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:28.111345+00:00, sha 70bbc345cb12)
  - site_page: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/blogs/jinsong-wang/2024/06/14/llm-observability-with-instana (fetched 2026-08-29T13:11:28.114668+00:00, sha 543f21af9c12)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.