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How To Emit Traces ​

Overview ​

Fullsend emits OpenTelemetry traces for every agent run. By default, traces are written to the run-telemetry.jsonl file that gets uploaded into an artifact in the workflow. Fullsend is able to send traces to a remote OpenTelemetry-compatible endpoint.

Follow this guide to configure a GitHub repository or organization to send traces to a backend like MLflow, Jaeger, Grafana Tempo, etc.

Before you begin ​

  • An OTLP/HTTP-compatible endpoint and its URL (e.g. https://mlflow.example.com:4318/v1/traces).
  • Authentication credentials for the endpoint (bearer token, basic auth, or API key) if required.
  • Network reachability from where runs execute (your machine or CI runners) to the backend endpoint.
  • The gh CLI installed and authenticated, or access to the GitHub UI for setting variables and secrets.

Send traces from a repository ​

  1. Determine the endpoint URL where your backend receives traces.

    For most systems this is <host>:4318/v1/traces.

  2. Set the endpoint as a GitHub Actions variable on the repository.

    bash
    gh variable set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT --body "https://example.com:4318" --repo <owner/repo>

    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT gets /v1/traces appended automatically by the SDK. If your backend uses a different path, use OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT and specify the full URL instead.

  3. Build the authentication header for your endpoint.

    The header format depends on your backend. Common patterns include:

    • Bearer token: Authorization=Bearer%20<token>
    • Basic auth: Authorization=Basic%20<base64 of user:password>

    %20 is the encoding for space, don't use spaces directly.

  4. Set the authentication header as a GitHub Actions secret on the repository.

    bash
    gh secret set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_HEADERS --body "<authentication-header>" --repo <owner/repo>

  5. (Optional) Add backend-specific routing headers to the same secret.

    Some backends require additional headers. For MLflow, append the experiment ID:

    bash
    gh secret set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_HEADERS \
  --body "<authentication-header>,x-mlflow-experiment-id=<id>" \
  --repo <owner/repo>

  6. (Optional) Set resource attributes to tag traces with metadata.

    bash
    gh variable set OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES \
  --body "deployment.env=prod,category=a" \
  --repo <owner/repo>

    Resource attributes may become filterable trace tags depending on your backend.

Send traces to an endpoint from a GitHub organization ​

  1. Set the endpoint as an organization-level variable.

    To make it visible to all repositories:

    bash
    gh variable set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT \
  --body "https://example.com:4318" \
  --org <org> --visibility all

    To restrict visibility to specific repositories:

    bash
    gh variable set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT \
  --body "https://example.com:4318" \
  --org <org> --repos repo1,repo2,repo3

  2. Set the authentication header as an organization-level secret with the same visibility.

    bash
    gh secret set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_HEADERS \
  --body "<authentication-header>" \
  --org <org> --visibility all

    To restrict visibility to specific repositories:

    bash
    gh secret set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_HEADERS \
  --body "<authentication-header>" \
  --org <org> --repos repo1,repo2,repo3

Disable trace export ​

Remove the endpoint variable and header secret from the repository or organization to stop sending traces to the endpoint. The local run-telemetry.jsonl file continues to be produced.

bash
gh variable delete OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT --repo <owner/repo>
gh secret delete OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_HEADERS --repo <owner/repo>

Disable the local trace file ​

Set OTEL_SDK_DISABLED to suppress all telemetry output, including the local file and any configured endpoint export.

bash
gh variable set OTEL_SDK_DISABLED --body "true" --repo <owner/repo>

To disable at the organization level and then re-enable individual repositories:

bash
gh variable set OTEL_SDK_DISABLED --body "true" --org <org> --visibility all
gh variable set OTEL_SDK_DISABLED --body "false" --repo <owner/repo>

See also ​

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