---
title: "Use OpenTelemetry to instrument your code · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/opentelemetry
updated: 2026-10-21
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Use OpenTelemetry to instrument your code

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers). Updated 2026-10-21.

For AI agents: [llms.txt](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) is a short guide that sends you to the rules your problem needs, and [rules.json](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/rules.json) holds every rule of this playbook as JSON.

- Level: Recommended
- Chapter: [Operations tools](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools)
- Rule: Add traces, metrics and log context to your code with the OpenTelemetry API and SDK, and send them over OTLP to any backend.
- Cost: Open source. Apache-2.0 licence, free to use with any backend. Managed backends that store the data are paid.
- How: OpenTelemetry is the vendor-neutral standard of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its Python SDK reached 1.0 in March 2021 and its JavaScript API in June 2021. Python 1.45.1 came out on 6 October 2026. The npm package `@opentelemetry/api` had about 55 million downloads in the week to 21 October 2026, and `opentelemetry-api` on PyPI about 145 million. The JavaScript SDK reached 3.0 on 20 October 2026. Stay on 2.x for six months, as [Pick what AI tools already know](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/how-to-choose/known-to-ai-tools) says. Every major backend reads OTLP, so you can change backends without touching code. What to trace is in [Trace requests across services](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/metrics-and-traces/distributed-tracing). Choose something else when one small service only needs metrics, and a Prometheus client library is simpler.
- Check: Every service starts the OpenTelemetry SDK at boot and exports over OTLP. A test request shows one trace with spans from at least 2 services in the backend.

## Examples

**Using these examples:** they show one way to follow this rule. Keep the behaviour and the check, not the syntax. Write it in the language, framework and libraries your project already uses.

### JavaScript example

```js
import { NodeSDK } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-node';
import { OTLPTraceExporter } from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http';

const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  serviceName: 'orders-api',
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({ url: 'https://otel.example.com/v1/traces' }),
});
sdk.start();
```

### Python example

```python
from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http.trace_exporter import OTLPSpanExporter
from opentelemetry.sdk.resources import Resource
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor

provider = TracerProvider(resource=Resource.create({"service.name": "orders-api"}))
provider.add_span_processor(BatchSpanProcessor(OTLPSpanExporter(endpoint="https://otel.example.com/v1/traces")))
trace.set_tracer_provider(provider)
```

## Sources

- [OpenTelemetry language APIs and SDKs](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/)
- [OpenTelemetry status](https://opentelemetry.io/status/)

## Related rules

- [Pick what AI tools already know](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/how-to-choose/known-to-ai-tools) in Software choices
- [Trace requests across services](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/operations/metrics-and-traces/distributed-tracing) in Operations

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/opentelemetry">Agent Wranglers software choices playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

- Next: [Use Prometheus for metrics](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools/prometheus)
- [Operations tools](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/stack/operations-tools)