Name: OpenTelemetry Instrumentation Guide
Author: srijan-at-qwertystars

OpenTelemetry Instrumentation Guide

USE when: code imports opentelemetry, @opentelemetry/*, go.opentelemetry.io/otel, or io.opentelemetry; user asks about distributed tracing, spans, trace context, OTLP, OTel Collector, telemetry pipelines, auto-instrumentation, W3C traceparent, span processors, metric counters/histograms/gauges, log bridge API, context propagation, baggage, sampling strategies, or exporter configuration for Jaeger/Prometheus/Zipkin/Tempo/Honeycomb/Datadog. DO NOT USE when: user asks about application-level logging frameworks only (log4j, winston, pino) without OTel integration, APM-vendor-specific SDKs (Datadog dd-trace, New Relic agent) without OTel, or browser-only analytics/RUM unrelated to OpenTelemetry.

srijan-at-qwertystars0 starsMar 23, 2026

Occupation
Categories: Monitoring

Architecture

OpenTelemetry separates concerns into three layers:

API: Vendor-neutral interfaces for instrumenting code. Libraries depend ONLY on the API. Never import SDK packages in library code.
SDK: Implements the API. Configures span processors, metric readers, samplers, exporters. App owners configure the SDK at startup.
Collector: Standalone binary that receives, processes, and exports telemetry. Decouples apps from backends.
OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol): Wire protocol for all three signals. Supports gRPC (port 4317) and HTTP/protobuf (port 4318).

Data flow: [App] → [API] → [SDK] → [Collector] → [Backend]

Three Signals

Traces

Traces represent end-to-end request paths through distributed systems.

Span: Unit of work with name, start/end time, attributes, events, links, status.
SpanContext: Immutable context (trace ID, span ID, trace flags) propagated across boundaries.

OpenTelemetry Instrumentation Guide

srijan-at-qwertystars0 starsMar 23, 2026

Occupation
Categories: Monitoring

Architecture

OpenTelemetry separates concerns into three layers:

API: Vendor-neutral interfaces for instrumenting code. Libraries depend ONLY on the API. Never import SDK packages in library code.

SDK: Implements the API. Configures span processors, metric readers, samplers, exporters. App owners configure the SDK at startup.

Collector: Standalone binary that receives, processes, and exports telemetry. Decouples apps from backends.

OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol): Wire protocol for all three signals. Supports gRPC (port 4317) and HTTP/protobuf (port 4318).

Data flow: [App] → [API] → [SDK] → [Collector] → [Backend]

OpenTelemetry Instrumentation Guide

Architecture

Three Signals

Traces

OpenTelemetry Instrumentation Guide

Architecture

Three Signals

Traces

Metrics

Logs

Context Propagation

Bluebubbles

Add Tracing

Analytics Events

Add Expert

Arthas

Arthas Eagleeye Traceid