Fwiw this is how I use Loki most of the time. Pick an app label, pick a time period, look at raw logs. The LogQL for this ends up something like `{app="workload-foo"}`. Loki is excellent at that.
Then if I know which pod I'll filter down to a specific pod with `{pod="workload-foo-1234"}`, sometimes I'll search for a specific term (error message etc) with `{pod="workload-foo-1234"} |= "error message"` then look at the logs around that. There's really no point writing complicated queries unless you need to.
Then if I know which pod I'll filter down to a specific pod with `{pod="workload-foo-1234"}`, sometimes I'll search for a specific term (error message etc) with `{pod="workload-foo-1234"} |= "error message"` then look at the logs around that. There's really no point writing complicated queries unless you need to.