# Opentelemetry Tracing

> OpenTelemetry & Distributed Tracing

- Skill: `j4flmao/opentelemetry-tracing` (Agent Skill)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add j4flmao/opentelemetry-tracing`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/j4flmao/opentelemetry-tracing/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: j4flmao (https://skillmd.com/u/j4flmao)
- Updated: 2026-09-21
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/j4flmao/opentelemetry-tracing

---

# OpenTelemetry & Distributed Tracing

## Core Concepts

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open standard for generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry data (Metrics, Logs, and Traces).

### 1. Distributed Tracing
In a microservices architecture, a single user request might hit 10 different services. Tracing visualizes this entire journey.
- **Trace ID:** A unique identifier for the entire transaction.
- **Span ID:** Represents a single unit of work (e.g., a DB query, an HTTP call) within the trace.
- **Context Propagation:** Services must extract the Trace ID from incoming HTTP Headers (e.g., `traceparent` W3C standard) and inject it into outgoing requests.

### 2. OTel Collector
Instead of services sending data directly to vendors (Datadog/Jaeger), they send it to the OTel Collector. The Collector acts as a vendor-agnostic pipeline (Receive -> Process -> Export).

### Distributed Tracing Map

```mermaid
%%{init: {"theme": "default", "flowchart": {"useMaxWidth": true}}}%%
flowchart TD
    subgraph Microservices ["Service Mesh"]
        A["Frontend Service<br/>(Generates Trace ID)"]
        B["Auth Service<br/>(Child Span)"]
        C["Order Service<br/>(Child Span)"]
    end
    
    subgraph Telemetry ["OTel Infrastructure"]
        D["OTel Collector (Agent/Gateway)"]
        E["Process (Batch/Filter)"]
        F["Export (Jaeger/Datadog)"]
    end
    
    A -->|"HTTP + traceparent Header"| B
    A -->|"HTTP + traceparent Header"| C
    
    A -.->|"Send Spans (OTLP)"| D
    B -.->|"Send Spans (OTLP)"| D
    C -.->|"Send Spans (OTLP)"| D
    
    D --> E
    E --> F
```