feat: Add OpenTelemetry integration design proposal #597
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This proposal outlines a comprehensive approach to add OpenTelemetry observability to ToolHive's MCP server proxies through middleware-based instrumentation. Key features: - Leverages existing middleware system for clean integration - Supports both SSE and stdio transport modes - Provides traces, metrics, and structured logging - Includes MCP-specific instrumentation beyond HTTP metrics - Supports multiple OTEL backends and Prometheus integration - Maintains backward compatibility with zero performance regression The design includes detailed examples of traces and metrics for tools/call operations, showing rich observability into MCP protocol interactions. Related-to: #474 Signed-off-by: Juan Antonio Osorio <[email protected]>
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| ## Non-Goals | ||
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| - Instrumenting MCP servers themselves (only the proxy layer) | ||
| - Custom telemetry formats or proprietary backends |
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Right! as long as they're OTLP traces and not something custom, it should be fine. a custom collector is fine, it's the format I referred to.
| Environment variable support: | ||
| ```bash | ||
| TOOLHIVE_OTEL_ENABLED=true | ||
| TOOLHIVE_OTEL_ENDPOINT=https://api.honeycomb.io |
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Right! that's the idea; or a command line flag for this would be good too.
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| Here's how a `tools/call` MCP method would appear in traces and metrics: | ||
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| **Distributed Trace:** |
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It shouldn't be limited, no. This is correct.
| ├── http.method: POST | ||
| ├── http.url: http://localhost:8080/messages?session_id=abc123 | ||
| ├── http.status_code: 200 | ||
| ├── mcp.server.name: github |
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Sure, that's a good point! I can make that configurable. I think we don't want to add that by default because of things like GDPR.
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This proposal outlines a comprehensive approach to add OpenTelemetry observability to ToolHive's MCP server proxies through middleware-based instrumentation.
Key Features
What's Included
The design follows KISS and DRY principles by leveraging existing patterns and infrastructure, making it maintainable and extensible for future observability needs.
Related-to: #474