Instrument your app

Telemetry is in early access. To turn it on for your workspace, book a call or ask in Discord.

Superlog accepts standard OpenTelemetry over OTLP/HTTP. Your app sends logs, traces, and metrics with an ingest key.

Create an ingest key

Open the OpenTelemetry setup

Open Overview in the sidebar. On a workspace with no telemetry, click Set up OpenTelemetry. Otherwise click Add telemetry and pick OpenTelemetry.If the page says Sending telemetry is not available, telemetry is not turned on for your workspace yet.

Create the key

Click Create ingest key, then Copy key. Keys start with sl_ingest_.You can see the key only once. Store it in your secret manager. You can find and revoke it later in Settings → Ingest keys.

An agent with the Superlog MCP server can also create a key with create_ingest_key. To have a coding agent instrument your project, copy the prompt under Paste this prompt into your coding agent and paste it into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or another agent. The prompt includes your key. It tells the agent to add the OpenTelemetry SDK with automatic instrumentation, set service.name and deployment.environment.name, connect your logger, and read the key from the environment. To do it yourself, continue below.

Configure the SDK

Every OpenTelemetry SDK reads the same environment variables. Set these wherever your app runs:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://superlog.sh/api/ingest
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=x-api-key=<your ingest key>

export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=checkout-api
export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment.name=production

Use the endpoint for your workspace’s region: https://superlog.sh/api/ingest for EU or https://us.superlog.sh/api/ingest for US.
The SDK adds /v1/logs, /v1/traces, and /v1/metrics to the endpoint.
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME sets service.name, which Superlog uses to group your data by service.
Superlog also accepts the key as Authorization: Bearer <key>.

Read the key from your secret manager. Do not commit it.

Language setup

The examples below use each language’s standard automatic instrumentation. The Node.js, Python, and Java examples set the traces, metrics, and logs exporters to otlp so all three signals are sent.

Node.js
Python
Go
Java

Install the SDK and the automatic instrumentations:

npm install @opentelemetry/api @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node

Start your app with the instrumentation loaded first:

export OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp
export NODE_OPTIONS="--require @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node/register"
node app.js

This instruments HTTP, common web frameworks, database clients, and the pino, winston, and bunyan loggers. To send winston records, also install @opentelemetry/winston-transport.

Install the distro and the OTLP exporter, then install instrumentations for the libraries your app uses:

pip install opentelemetry-distro opentelemetry-exporter-otlp
opentelemetry-bootstrap -a install

Run your app through opentelemetry-instrument:

export OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_PYTHON_LOGGING_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_ENABLED=true
opentelemetry-instrument python app.py

OTEL_PYTHON_LOGGING_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_ENABLED sends records from the standard logging module, with their trace and span IDs.

Go has no automatic agent. Set up the SDK in code with autoexport, which builds the exporters from the environment variables above:

go get go.opentelemetry.io/otel \
  go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk \
  go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/metric \
  go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/log \
  go.opentelemetry.io/otel/log \
  go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/exporters/autoexport \
  go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/instrumentation/net/http/otelhttp \
  go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/bridges/otelslog

package main

import (
	"context"
	"errors"

	"go.opentelemetry.io/contrib/exporters/autoexport"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/log/global"
	"go.opentelemetry.io/otel/propagation"
	sdklog "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/log"
	sdkmetric "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/metric"
	sdktrace "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/sdk/trace"
)

// setupOTel starts traces, metrics, and logs. Call the returned function on exit.
func setupOTel(ctx context.Context) (func(context.Context) error, error) {
	spans, err := autoexport.NewSpanExporter(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	tracerProvider := sdktrace.NewTracerProvider(sdktrace.WithBatcher(spans))
	otel.SetTracerProvider(tracerProvider)
	otel.SetTextMapPropagator(propagation.NewCompositeTextMapPropagator(
		propagation.TraceContext{}, propagation.Baggage{},
	))

	metrics, err := autoexport.NewMetricReader(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	meterProvider := sdkmetric.NewMeterProvider(sdkmetric.WithReader(metrics))
	otel.SetMeterProvider(meterProvider)

	logs, err := autoexport.NewLogExporter(ctx)
	if err != nil {
		return nil, err
	}
	loggerProvider := sdklog.NewLoggerProvider(sdklog.WithProcessor(sdklog.NewBatchProcessor(logs)))
	global.SetLoggerProvider(loggerProvider)

	return func(ctx context.Context) error {
		return errors.Join(tracerProvider.Shutdown(ctx), meterProvider.Shutdown(ctx), loggerProvider.Shutdown(ctx))
	}, nil
}

The SDK reads OTEL_SERVICE_NAME and OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES on its own, and autoexport sends all three signals over OTLP by default. Wrap HTTP handlers with otelhttp.NewHandler and create loggers with otelslog.NewLogger so requests become spans and slog records carry trace IDs.Call the returned shutdown function before the process exits, or the last batch is lost.

Download the OpenTelemetry Java agent:

curl -L -o opentelemetry-javaagent.jar \
  https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java-instrumentation/releases/latest/download/opentelemetry-javaagent.jar

Start your app with the agent:

export OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=otlp
export OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp
java -javaagent:opentelemetry-javaagent.jar -jar app.jar

The agent instruments common frameworks and clients, and sends Logback and Log4j records with their trace and span IDs.

Check that data arrives

Start your app and send it a few requests. Then open Logs and Traces in the sidebar. Your service appears under its service.name. In Settings → Ingest keys, the key shows Used just now.

Other ways to send telemetry

See Collect telemetry for the OpenTelemetry Collector, Vercel, AWS CloudWatch, Google Cloud, and the browser SDK.

Get started

Collect telemetry

Make your application reliable

Concepts

Migrate

Reference

Security

Cookbook

Instrument your app

Create an ingest key

Configure the SDK

Language setup

Check that data arrives

Other ways to send telemetry

​Create an ingest key

​Configure the SDK

​Language setup

​Check that data arrives

​Other ways to send telemetry

Create an ingest key

Configure the SDK

Language setup

Check that data arrives

Other ways to send telemetry