A guide for adding OpenTelemetry monitoring to Go services. OpenTelemetry collects traces, metrics, and logs so developers can understand how software behaves.

It helps set up the Go SDK, add HTTP, gRPC, database, AWS, and messaging instrumentation, use compile-time instrumentation, configure exporters, and review breaking changes.

It helps developers choose compatible Go packages, update older code, and tune monitoring overhead and shutdown behavior.

otel-go — Skill for Claude Code by ollygarden

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-go

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 20 skills.

Its marketplace also offers this one on its own, as the plugin otel-go — /plugin install otel-go 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-go/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-go)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-go"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-go/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.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-go"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills/otel-go.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 130 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 1,562 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.

Model	Per session	Once invoked
Fable 5.1	$0.00130	$0.01562
Opus 5.5	$0.00052	$0.00625
Sonnet 5.5	$0.00026	$0.00312
Haiku 4.5	$0.00013	$0.00156

Measured 11d ago against content hash 13f32a2435f0, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-10-07, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

otel-go 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.

skills/otel-go/SKILL.md · 82 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 82 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

OpenTelemetry in Go

Entry point for OpenTelemetry mechanics in Go services. Load a reference below based on the task; each reference is self-contained.

References

File	Use when
`references/declarative-setup.md`	Configuring the SDK via `otelconf` and YAML: providers, propagators, shutdown, env-var substitution.
`references/api.md`	Looking up import paths, global API access, tracer/meter/logger usage, attributes, propagation, log bridges (zap, slog).
`references/instrumentation-libraries.md`	Picking or wiring contrib libraries (otelhttp, otelgrpc, database, AWS, message queues, propagators, resource detectors), and writing manual instrumentation that follows semconv.
`references/performance.md`	Tuning sampling, batch processor, metric reader, exporter compression/retry, attribute allocation, log `Enabled()` short-circuiting, graceful shutdown.
`references/breaking-changes.md`	Auditing existing code for deprecated calls, renamed semantic conventions, and removed APIs across recent SDK / contrib releases.
`references/compile-time-instrumentation.md`	Zero-code, compile-time instrumentation with `otelc`: usage modes (`otelc go build`, tool dependency, toolexec drop-in), subcommands, supported libraries, rule sources/precedence, and pinning via `otel.instrumentation.go`.

For upgrade reviews, always finish with a safe local verification path (go mod tidy -diff, go build ./..., and go test ./...). Test exporter URL or retry changes against a disposable local receiver, never a deployment endpoint.

Module versioning — read before adding dependencies

opentelemetry-go is split into independently versioned module groups. They do NOT share one version number. Assuming they do is the most common cause of broken builds and version churn:

Read the full file on GitHub · 82 lines

Files

What ships with it

9 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.

11d ago Changed 13f32a2435f0
22d ago Changed · +4 lines e8404b56b38d
1mo ago Changed 410e2dd167ca
2mo ago First seen · 78 lines · 130 tokens per session scan A 4944f10267b8

Subscribe to this mod's changes

otel-go is a skill published in the GitHub repository ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills (125 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 130 tokens to every session and 1,562 once invoked, about $0.0005 per session on Opus 5.5. 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.

Analytics and metrics Claude Code Go Languages agent-skills ai codex observability opentelemetry

otel-go next to 6 skills from other repositories
Mod	Type	Stars	Last push	Licence	Scan	Tokens	Works with
otel-goollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills	Skill	125	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	130	Claude Code
golang-observabilityseaworld008/Commonly-used-high-value-skills	Skill	74	2d ago	MIT	A	20	Claude Code, Codex
golang-observability-opentelemetrybobmatnyc/claude-mpm-skills	Skill	78	3mo ago	MIT	A	31	Claude Code
opentelemetry-net-instrumentationAaronontheweb/dotnet-skills	Skill	1.3k	9d ago	MIT	A	56	Claude Code
vendor-updateapache/skywalking-banyandb	Skill	355	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	95	Claude Code
compilingapache/skywalking-banyandb	Skill	355	yesterday	Apache-2.0	A	31	Claude Code
zerolog-observabilitymakifbaysal/tasktrooper	Skill	120	16d ago	Apache-2.0	A	36	Claude Code, Codex