otel-genai-instrumentation

otel-genai-instrumentation is a skill for Claude Code from honeycombio/agent-skill. It costs 146 tokens per session (7,226 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A guide for adding OpenTelemetry tracing to applications that use language models or AI agents, including their prompts, responses, and tool calls. Honeycomb is the observability service targeted by the guide.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to configure basic OpenTelemetry first, then trace GenAI calls and optionally capture model content for debugging.
Why use it?
It helps developers investigate failed tool calls, repeated planning, and agents that stop responding by showing what happened during an AI request.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT} variable.

Runs only inside its plugin — its command needs a path that Claude Code sets for a plugin’s own hooks and for nothing else. Install the plugin, not this.

Part of the honeycomb plugin — 11 skills, 1 command, 2 agents, 2 hooks shipped together

Good fit Use it to configure basic OpenTelemetry first, then trace GenAI calls and optionally capture model content for debugging.

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Install

Getting it into your agent

This one installs as part of its plugin. Adding the marketplace and installing the plugin brings it with everything else the plugin ships.

Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add honeycombio/agent-skill
Claude Code
/plugin install honeycomb

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install honeycomb, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 11 skills, 1 command, 2 agents, 2 hooks.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

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README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/otel-genai-instrumentation/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/otel-genai-instrumentation)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/otel-genai-instrumentation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/otel-genai-instrumentation/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for otel-genai-instrumentation

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/otel-genai-instrumentation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/honeycombio/agent-skill/otel-genai-instrumentation.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 146 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 7,226 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.
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 5.1 $0.00146 $0.07226
Opus 5 $0.00073 $0.03613
Sonnet 5 $0.00029 $0.01445
Haiku 4.5 $0.00015 $0.00723

Measured 11d ago against content hash 0f7b997b4df4, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-11, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

otel-genai-instrumentation 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 11d 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.

honeycomb/skills/otel-genai-instrumentation/SKILL.md · 666 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 666 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

GenAI Instrumentation for Honeycomb

Instrumenting LLM and agent applications using OTel Semantic Conventions for GenAI (currently v1.40.0, Development status). For conceptual foundations, see the observability-fundamentals skill.

Base OTEL Setup (Required First)

BEFORE implementing GenAI instrumentation, ensure your base OpenTelemetry configuration is complete.

Use the otel-instrumentation skill to configure all standard OTEL environment variables (OTEL_SERVICE_NAME, OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS, OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL, signal-specific endpoints, etc.) and verify basic spans are flowing to Honeycomb.

GenAI instrumentation adds GenAI-specific configuration on top of that base setup.

Critical Requirements (Non-Negotiable)

BEFORE implementing any GenAI instrumentation, complete these steps in order:

Step 1: Ask About Content Capture (FIRST!)

Stop and ask the user this question BEFORE writing any code or configuration:

"Do you want to capture the actual prompts and model responses in your traces?

Enabling content capture:

  • ✅ Helps debug tool call failures, planning loops, and agent deadlocks
  • ✅ Lets you see why the model made specific decisions
  • ❌ Captures potentially sensitive content (user prompts, model responses)
  • ❌ May contain PII, proprietary data, or confidential information

Recommended for: debugging/development, non-sensitive data, or if you have filtering

Not recommended for: production with sensitive data, PII/health/financial info"

Record their answer — you'll need it when configuring instrumentation.

Step 2: Enable GenAI Conventions (REQUIRED)

export OTEL_SEMCONV_STABILITY_OPT_IN=gen_ai_latest_experimental

Without this, GenAI spans will not be created.

Step 3: Set Required Attributes on EVERY Span (REQUIRED)

  • gen_ai.operation.name — e.g., chat, execute_tool, invoke_agent
  • gen_ai.conversation.id — same value for all spans in a conversation

Read the full file on GitHub · 666 lines

Files

What ships with it

7 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

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. 11d ago First seen · 666 lines · 146 tokens per session scan A 0f7b997b4df4

Subscribe to this mod's changes

otel-genai-instrumentation is a skill published in the GitHub repository honeycombio/agent-skill (22 stars, last pushed 15d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 146 tokens to every session and 7,226 once invoked, about $0.0007 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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