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Evidence record · captured 2026-10-11

Grafana OpenTelemetry

Guides instrumenting an app with OpenTelemetry and shipping metrics, logs, traces and profiles to Grafana Cloud or self-hosted Mimir/Loki/Tempo/Pyroscope: SDK auto-instrumentation per language (Go, Java agent, Python, Node.js, .NET), Beyla eBPF for zero-code, Alloy collector configuration, and the Grafana Cloud OTLP gateway with Basic auth.

Official publisherUnverifiedSource reviewedBehavior not tested
Source review

Editorial assessment

This is a source-only assessment. It does not claim runtime or security testing.

What it does

A Grafana-specific OpenTelemetry runbook that pairs each setup step with a verification check, such as a curl probe that should return 400 rather than 401 or 404, and TraceQL and PromQL queries to confirm data arrives.

Best for

  • Pointing an existing service's OTLP exporter at Grafana Cloud with Basic auth
  • Debugging spans that do not appear in Explore
  • Choosing between head sampling in the SDK and tail sampling in Alloy

Strengths in the source

  • Gives a credential smoke test with expected status codes that separate auth failures from wrong endpoints.
  • Troubleshooting maps symptoms to causes, including bundlers defeating Node require hooks and Gunicorn needing post-fork reinit.
  • References carry full Alloy and Collector configs with tail_sampling, Go SDK code, a .NET section and Beyla eBPF setup.
  • Shows Kubernetes Operator Instrumentation resources and pod inject annotations.

Limitations

  • Needs a Grafana Cloud stack with an API token carrying publisher roles, or a self-hosted Mimir, Loki and Tempo stack.
  • Downloads the Java agent from the releases/latest URL, so the binary fetched at run time is not pinned by this copy.
  • The smoke test places the API key on the command line, where shell history and process listings can capture it.

When not to use it

  • Sending telemetry to a non-Grafana backend, where the gateway and auth steps do not apply.
  • Building dashboards or alerts, which this skill does not cover.

Reviewed by Retenta editorial on 2026-10-11; scope: source only.

Files included in this review
  • skills/grafana-core/opentelemetry/SKILL.md

Evidence and boundaries

Execution · not tested

Retenta has not executed this skill.

Security · not tested

The skill folder bundles no executable scripts. Retenta has not run a security scan.

Revision
1ccacf29049fde66637fe01ab93a83a772da323b
License evidence
Apache-2.0Retenta preserves the license text captured with this immutable upstream snapshot; no independent legal or security review is claimed.
Last source change
2026-07-01
Independent verification
Published by Grafana Labs, but not independently verified by a third-party reviewer.
Upstream repository
Open publisher repository

Compatibility

Claude Code

documented

Named in the upstream skill or repository documentation; not tested by Retenta.

OpenAI Codex

documented

Named in the upstream skill or repository documentation; not tested by Retenta.

Cursor

documented

Named in the upstream skill or repository documentation; not tested by Retenta.

any Agent Skills client via npx skills

documented

Named in the upstream skill or repository documentation; not tested by Retenta.

Requirements and access

  • OpenTelemetry SDKs or Grafana Alloy / Beyla
  • Grafana Cloud instance ID + API token (or self-hosted LGTM stack)

Referenced tools

No named tool is required by the reviewed SKILL.md.

Install from the source

Clones the current default branch, which may be newer than the reviewed revision 1ccacf2. The destination shown is Claude Code's personal skills folder; other agents read the same folder from their own skills directory.

View the SKILL.md at its source Verify the publisher's install documentation

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Install the full skill folder

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/grafana/skills.git
cp -R skills/skills/grafana-core/opentelemetry ~/.claude/skills/opentelemetry

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