Otel cli

Inspects OpenTelemetry traces, logs, and metrics from a local OTLP server. Use when the user needs to debug distributed traces, inspect application logs, check metrics, or troubleshoot observability issues during development.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add hrntknr/otel-cli --skill otel-cli

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One thing to look at

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SKILL.md

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otel-cli

An in-memory OTLP server with SQL querying. Start a local collector, ingest traces/logs/metrics, and query with standard SQL.

Quick Start

# 1. Start server (background)
otel-cli server --no-tui &

# 2. App exports to localhost:4317 (gRPC) or localhost:4318 (HTTP)

# 3. Query
otel-cli sql "SELECT span_name, duration_ns FROM traces WHERE service_name = 'myapp'"

# 4. Cleanup
otel-cli shutdown

SQL Queries (Primary Interface)

Use otel-cli sql for all querying. Powered by DataFusion (standard SQL). Use --format jsonl for programmatic processing.

otel-cli sql "SELECT * FROM traces WHERE service_name = 'myapp'" --format jsonl
otel-cli sql "SELECT * FROM traces WHERE attributes['http.method'] = 'GET'"
otel-cli sql "SELECT service_name, COUNT(*), AVG(duration_ns) FROM traces GROUP BY service_name"
otel-cli sql "SELECT * FROM logs WHERE severity = 'ERROR'"
otel-cli sql "SELECT * FROM metrics WHERE metric_name = 'http.duration'"
otel-cli sql -f "SELECT * FROM traces"   # Follow mode (real-time)

Convenience Subcommands

Shorthand wrappers around SQL. Use otel-cli sql for anything beyond simple filtering.

otel-cli traces --service myapp --limit 50
otel-cli traces -f --service myapp              # Follow
otel-cli logs --severity ERROR --since 5m
otel-cli metrics --name http_requests_total

Server Management

otel-cli status                                  # Show counts
otel-cli clear --traces --logs --metrics         # Reset state
otel-cli shutdown                                # Stop server

SQL Schema

traces

Column	Type
`trace_id`, `span_id`, `parent_span_id`	Utf8
`span_name`, `service_name`, `status_message`	Utf8
`kind`, `status_code`	Int32
`start_time`, `end_time`, `duration_ns`	UInt64
`attributes`, `resource`	Map<Utf8, Utf8>

logs

Column	Type
`timestamp`	UInt64
`severity`	Utf8
`severity_number`	Int32
`body`, `service_name`, `trace_id`, `span_id`	Utf8
`attributes`, `resource`	Map<Utf8, Utf8>

metrics

Column	Type
`timestamp`	UInt64
`metric_name`, `metric_type`, `service_name`	Utf8
`value`, `sum`	Float64
`count`	UInt64
`attributes`, `resource`	Map<Utf8, Utf8>

Agent Tips

Always use --no-tui when starting the server
Use --format jsonl for programmatic processing
Use otel-cli clear between test runs to reset state
Prefer otel-cli sql over convenience subcommands — it supports full SQL (aggregation, joins, subqueries)
Access map columns with bracket syntax: attributes['http.method'], resource['service.name']
Store capacity: --max-traces (default 1000), --max-spans, --max-logs, --max-metrics