instrumentation

name	instrumentation
description	Guidelines for OpenTelemetry instrumentation, observability strategy, and standards.

Instrumentation

Methodology

• Standard: Use OpenTelemetry (OTel).
• Propagation: Propagate W3C Trace Context across all boundaries.

Naming & Standards

• Spans: Name after business operation (e.g., checkout), NOT transport (POST /api/checkout).
• Metrics: Use OTel naming (e.g., foo.bar), NOT Prometheus contextless names.
• Attributes: Follow OTel Semantic Conventions (v1.37.0).
  • Use http.path with placeholders (e.g., /users/{id}). NEVER use http.url (PII risk).
• Scopes: Name Tracers/Meters using the fully qualified library name.

Go Implementation

Initialization

Inject trace.Tracer and metric.Meter as dependencies.

type Service struct {
	tracer trace.Tracer
	meter  metric.Meter
}
// Initialize with namespaced tracer/meter
s.tracer = tp.Tracer("github.com/org/repo/pkg/service")

Starting Spans

Always set the proper SpanKind.

ctx, span := s.tracer.Start(ctx, "calculate-tax",
    trace.WithSpanKind(trace.SpanKindInternal), // or Server, Client, Producer, Consumer
)
defer span.End()

Recording Errors

if err != nil {
    span.RecordError(err)
    span.SetStatus(codes.Error, err.Error())
    return err
}

HTTP Instrumentation

Use httpconv for standard attributes.

// Client
attrs := httpconv.ClientRequest(req)
ctx, span := c.tracer.Start(req.Context(), "HTTP "+req.Method,
    trace.WithSpanKind(trace.SpanKindClient),
    trace.WithAttributes(attrs...),
)

// Server
attrs := httpconv.ServerRequest("server-name", r)
ctx, span := h.tracer.Start(ctx, "HTTP "+r.Method,
    trace.WithSpanKind(trace.SpanKindServer),
    trace.WithAttributes(attrs...),
)