Instrument applications with the OpenTelemetry SDK and prove the telemetry is good by validating it against a local Kopai backend. Use when setting up observability, adding tracing/logging/metrics, deciding what to instrument or which attributes to add, retrofitting OTel into an existing codebase, threading context through call chains, configuring sampling, or when traces/logs/metrics aren't appearing after setup. Also use when users say things like "my traces aren't showing up", "I don't see any data", or "how do I add observability to my app". Do NOT use to investigate existing telemetry for a root cause (use root-cause-analysis), to build dashboards (use create-dashboard), or to instrument LLM and agent calls (use otel-genai-instrumentation).
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Low-risk findings worth noting
| title | impact | tags |
|---|---|---|
| Sections | CRITICAL | index, sections |
File inventory for the OpenTelemetry instrumentation rules. SKILL.md routes by task;
this table is the complete list.
| Section | Impact | Files |
|---|---|---|
| setup | CRITICAL | setup-backend.md, setup-environment.md |
| lang | HIGH | lang-nodejs.md, lang-fastify.md, lang-nextjs.md, lang-python.md, lang-go.md, lang-java.md, lang-dotnet.md, lang-ruby.md, lang-php.md, lang-rust.md, lang-erlang.md, lang-cpp.md |
| instrument | CRITICAL | instrument-spans.md, instrument-attributes.md, instrument-errors.md, context-propagation.md, layered-telemetry.md, sampling.md |
| validate | CRITICAL | drive-traffic.md, validate-traces.md, validate-logs.md, validate-metrics.md, validate-shutdown.md |
| troubleshoot | HIGH | troubleshoot-no-data.md, troubleshoot-missing-spans.md, troubleshoot-missing-attrs.md, troubleshoot-wrong-port.md |
references