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Instrumentation rules control how telemetry is recorded from your sources. You can apply rules to specific sources and instrumentation libraries to control which attributes, headers, and payloads are collected and how custom instrumentations behave.

Benefits

  • Control what is recorded — Decide which code attributes, HTTP headers, and payloads are added to spans so you capture the right context without excess volume.
  • Enrich without code changes — Get better context without modifying or redeploying your application.
  • Trace back to code — Code attributes link spans to the code that produced them, so you can debug and analyze with confidence.
  • Custom instrumentation — Define custom eBPF-based instrumentations for arbitrary functions in your application or its dependencies.

Rule types

You can manage instrumentation rules via odictl or YAML.

Custom instrumentation

Define custom eBPF-based instrumentations for arbitrary functions in your application or its dependencies. Use custom instrumentation with Java and Go applications to instrument application-specific code. See Custom Instrumentation for configuration.

Code attributes

Add semantic code attributes to spans so you can trace an operation back to the code that generated it.
Planned for a future release.

Headers collection

Add span attributes by collecting HTTP header data from requests and responses.
Planned for a future release.

Payload collection

Add span attributes by collecting payload data from HTTP requests and responses, database queries, and messaging systems.
Planned for a future release.