otel-collector-builder

otel-collector-builder is a skill for Claude Code from ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills. It costs 104 tokens per session (1,815 once invoked), scanned A, original, Apache-2.0.

A guide to building a custom OpenTelemetry Collector, a service that receives, processes, and sends observability data such as logs, metrics, and traces.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to write a builder.yaml manifest, align component and provider versions, and build the custom Collector with OpenTelemetry Collector Builder for CI or Docker.
Why use it?
It helps when the standard Collector packages contain too much, lack a needed component, or cannot include a private or locally developed component.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the opentelemetry-agent-skills plugin — 19 skills shipped together

Good fit Use it to write a builder.yaml manifest, align component and provider versions, and build the custom Collector with OpenTelemetry Collector Builder for CI or Docker.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder
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.

Any agent
npx skills add ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills --skill otel-collector-builder
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install opentelemetry-agent-skills, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 19 skills.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin otel-collector-builder/plugin install otel-collector-builder after adding the marketplace above.

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.

agentmods badge for otel-collector-builder

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder/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-collector-builder

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-collector-builder.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 104 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 1,815 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. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector pass 7 Sept 2026
How audits are shown
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 $0.00104 $0.01815
Opus 5 $0.00052 $0.00907
Sonnet 5 $0.00021 $0.00363
Haiku 4.5 $0.00010 $0.00181

Measured 8d ago against content hash 52698f7da3f9, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

otel-collector-builder 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 8d 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.

skills/otel-collector-builder/SKILL.md · 112 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 112 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenTelemetry Collector Builder (OCB)

OCB generates and compiles a custom Collector binary from a YAML manifest that lists exactly the components to include. Source of truth: cmd/builder in opentelemetry-collector.

Use OCB when the stock otelcol/otelcol-contrib distributions don't fit: you need a component that ships in no distribution, a private/local component, or a slimmer binary with only the components you run.

This skill covers building the distribution. For configuring individual components, see otel-collector; for writing a new component, see the component-authoring guidance; for generating test traffic against the built binary, see otel-telemetrygen.

Workflow

  1. Install OCB at the version matching your target Collector version (see Install).
  2. Write the manifestdist: block plus component lists. Start from the minimal manifest; full key reference in references/manifest.md.
  3. Align versions. All core components share one v0.x.0 version, contrib components use the same v0.x.0, and confmap providers use the paired stable v1.y.0. Getting this wrong is the #1 build failure — see Version alignment.
  4. Build with ocb --config=builder.yaml (binary is named builder when installed via go install). CI, Docker, multi-arch, and local-component workflows are in references/workflows.md.
  5. Verify: run ./dist/<name> validate --config=<collector-config>.yaml, then start it and send test data (otel-telemetrygen skill). If the build fails, see references/troubleshooting.md.

Install

Pick the OCB version equal to the Collector core version you're targeting.

# Release binary (named ocb): https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/releases?q=cmd/builder
# Go install (binary is named `builder`, not `ocb`):
go install go.opentelemetry.io/collector/cmd/[email protected]

Read the full file on GitHub · 112 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 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. 8d ago Changed 52698f7da3f9
  2. 12d ago First seen · 112 lines · 104 tokens per session scan A 1adca90e1419

Subscribe to this mod's changes

otel-collector-builder is a skill published in the GitHub repository ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills (98 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 104 tokens to every session and 1,815 once invoked, about $0.0005 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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