OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry is a vendor-neutral observability framework for generating, collecting, and exporting traces, metrics, and logs.

Documentation

• Docs: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/languages/js/

Key Capabilities

OpenTelemetry JS bundles capabilities that developers often reach for separate tools to cover:

• Auto-instrumentation: @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node automatically instruments popular frameworks and libraries (Express, HTTP, gRPC, database clients) with zero code changes — no manual span creation needed for common libraries
• Resource detection: built-in detectors for cloud providers, containers, and process info via OTEL_NODE_RESOURCE_DETECTORS — no need for custom resource-tagging middleware
• Context propagation: W3C TraceContext and Baggage propagated automatically across async boundaries when using tracer.startActiveSpan — no manual context threading required

Best Practices