otel-queries

A query tool for OpenTelemetry traces from gh-aw workflows. OpenTelemetry is a standard way to record the timing, errors, and relationships of work performed by software.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to inspect traces in JSONL files or telemetry systems, compare workflow phases, find bottlenecks, and diagnose agent or workflow runs.
Why use it?
It helps turn trace data into answers about slow runs, failures, missing links between steps, and recurring error patterns.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/github/gh-aw/otel-queries
Any agent
npx skills add github/gh-aw --skill otel-queries
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/github/gh-aw

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 20 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,999 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00020 $0.01999
Opus 5 $0.00010 $0.01000
Sonnet 5 $0.00004 $0.00400
Haiku 4.5 $0.00002 $0.00200

Measured 2d ago against content hash 70b356501454, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

otel-queries scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

.github/skills/otel-queries/SKILL.md · 289 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 289 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OTel Queries

Use this skill to inspect gh-aw OpenTelemetry/OTLP data and answer telemetry questions without re-deriving trace fields, backend filters, and diagnostics.

When To Use

Use this skill for requests such as:

  • analyze OTEL or OTLP data
  • inspect traces in Grafana, Tempo, Sentry, Honeycomb, or Datadog
  • explain why a workflow or agent run is slow or failing
  • compare run phases, error clusters, or span attributes
  • identify the best observability or performance improvement
  • close the loop from telemetry into code or workflow changes

Do not use this skill for instrumentation-only tasks that do not require reading telemetry. For pure emit-side work, start with the existing OTLP code and docs.

Primary Goal

Reduce a broad telemetry task to one tight loop:

  1. Find the cheapest trustworthy telemetry source.
  2. Run a small fixed set of common queries.
  3. Confirm one concrete bottleneck, missing attribute, or broken correlation path.
  4. Answer the user's telemetry question directly.
  5. Recommend or implement a follow-on optimization only when the evidence supports it.

Telemetry Sources In Priority Order

Prefer sources in this order unless the user says otherwise:

  1. Local artifacts or mirrors already in the workspace.
  2. /tmp/gh-aw/otel.jsonl for gh-aw spans.
  3. Live OTLP backend data through an MCP server or supported tool — Copilot CLI spans are exported directly to the configured OTLP backend (no local file mirror) and must be queried there, filtered by the github.run_id resource attribute.
  4. Static code inspection only, when no telemetry is available.

Use the cheapest source that can disconfirm the current hypothesis.

Standard Analysis Loop

Always answer these questions in order before expanding scope.

1. Do spans exist for the run or workflow at all?

Look for:

  • traceId
  • span name
  • service.name
  • github.repository
  • github.run_id

If these are missing, the problem is likely export, filtering, or trace propagation rather than optimization.

Read the full file on GitHub · 289 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 289 lines · 20 tokens per session scan A 70b356501454

Subscribe to this mod's changes

otel-queries is a skill published in the GitHub repository github/gh-aw (5,084 stars, last pushed today), licensed MIT. It adds 20 tokens to every session and 1,999 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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