runfabric

OpenTelemetry

RunFabric can export traces via OpenTelemetry (OTLP) when configured. The CLI and daemon initialize the SDK at startup and shut it down on exit. When no exporter is configured, tracing is no-op (no overhead).

Which env vars matter: Environment variables
Enable tracing quickly: Enabling tracing
What gets traced: What is traced

Environment variables

Variable	Description
`OTEL_SERVICE_NAME`	Service name for the resource (default: `runfabric`)
`OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT`	OTLP endpoint as host:port (e.g. `localhost:4318`) or URL; when set, traces are exported over HTTP.
`OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT`	Traces-specific endpoint; overrides `OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT` for traces only
`OTEL_TRACES_ENABLED`	Set to `1` or `true` to enable tracing; if no endpoint is set, defaults to `localhost:4318`
`OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER`	Sampler: `always_on`, `always_off`, `traceidratio`, `parentbased_always_on`, `parentbased_traceidratio` (default: `always_on` when exporter set)
`OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG`	For `traceidratio` / `parentbased_traceidratio`: sampling ratio 0.0–1.0 (e.g. `0.1` = 10%) to reduce overhead in production

Protocol is OTLP over HTTP. Use an OpenTelemetry Collector or a backend (e.g. Jaeger, Honeycomb, Grafana Tempo) that accepts OTLP.

Enabling tracing

# Export to a local collector (e.g. otelcol) on default HTTP port
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318
runfabricd --dashboard --config runfabric.yml

# Or enable with default endpoint
export OTEL_TRACES_ENABLED=1
runfabricd

What is traced

Daemon: Each HTTP request gets a span with http.method and http.route. Spans are created by the runfabric/daemon tracer. On 4xx/5xx responses the span status is set to Error.
CLI: The plan, deploy, and invoke commands create a span each (tracers runfabric/plan, runfabric/deploy, runfabric/invoke) with attributes: config_path, stage, function_name (where applicable), provider_override (when set).

Key span attributes: http.method, http.route, http.status_code (daemon); config_path, stage, function_name, provider_override (CLI).

Shutdown

The CLI calls telemetry.Shutdown with a 5-second timeout on exit so pending spans are flushed before the process ends.

Privacy

By default, span attributes include config path, stage, and function names—not secrets or request bodies. Do not put secrets (API keys, tokens, connection strings) into custom span attributes or log lines. Use OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG (e.g. 0.1) in production to limit volume if needed.