Observability on Board

Episode 01tracesmetricslogs

Claude Code has observability built in

Claude Code ships an OpenTelemetry exporter for metrics, events and traces. One settings file turns all of it on, for one developer or a whole organisation.

Ship telemetry toUse an OTLP endpoint you already have, from another vendor or your platform team. This one needs a one-time setup step: save your endpoint and the episodes fill it in.Set your endpointRun an OpenTelemetry Collector on your machine and watch telemetry arrive in its terminal. No account needed.More detailsShip straight to Bronto. You need an account and an API key with ingest permission.More details

Switch it on

Add this to ~/.claude/settings.json. Every session from the next one on exports metrics, events and traces. Traces are beta; CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA opts in.

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA": "1",
    "OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL": "http/protobuf",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "https://ingestion.eu.bronto.io",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS": "x-bronto-api-key=<BRONTO_API_KEY>,x-bronto-dataset=claude-code"
  }
}
{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA": "1",
    "OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL": "http/protobuf",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "https://ingestion.eu.bronto.io",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS": "x-bronto-api-key=<BRONTO_API_KEY>,x-bronto-dataset=claude-code",

    "OTEL_METRIC_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "10000",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "5000",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "5000",

    "OTEL_LOG_USER_PROMPTS": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_ASSISTANT_RESPONSES": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_TOOL_DETAILS": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_TOOL_CONTENT": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_RAW_API_BODIES": "0",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_OTEL_CONTENT_MAX_LENGTH": "1048576",

    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_SESSION_ID": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_VERSION": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_ACCOUNT_UUID": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_ENTRYPOINT": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES": "true",

    "CLAUDE_CODE_PROPAGATE_TRACEPARENT": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_FEEDBACK_SURVEY_FOR_OTEL": "1"
  }
}

The groups after the destination: export cadence, what event content is captured, which attributes ride on metrics, and trace-context propagation. Delete what you don’t want; the docs describe every variable.

The file can’t expand shell variables, so paste the key literally and use one that can only ingest. x-bronto-dataset names the dataset.

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA": "1",
    "OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL": "http/protobuf",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "http://localhost:4318"
  }
}
{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA": "1",
    "OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL": "http/protobuf",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "http://localhost:4318",

    "OTEL_METRIC_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "10000",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "5000",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "5000",

    "OTEL_LOG_USER_PROMPTS": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_ASSISTANT_RESPONSES": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_TOOL_DETAILS": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_TOOL_CONTENT": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_RAW_API_BODIES": "0",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_OTEL_CONTENT_MAX_LENGTH": "1048576",

    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_SESSION_ID": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_VERSION": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_ACCOUNT_UUID": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_ENTRYPOINT": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES": "true",

    "CLAUDE_CODE_PROPAGATE_TRACEPARENT": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_FEEDBACK_SURVEY_FOR_OTEL": "1"
  }
}

The groups after the destination: export cadence, what event content is captured, which attributes ride on metrics, and trace-context propagation. Delete what you don’t want; the docs describe every variable.

This assumes a Collector listening on localhost:4318; the Local Collector setup shows how to start one.

This uses the endpoint and auth header you saved in the setup guide.

{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA": "1",
    "OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL": "http/protobuf",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS": "YOUR_AUTH_HEADER=YOUR_AUTH_VALUE",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT"
  }
}
{
  "env": {
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENHANCED_TELEMETRY_BETA": "1",
    "OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER": "otlp",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL": "http/protobuf",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS": "YOUR_AUTH_HEADER=YOUR_AUTH_VALUE",
    "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT",

    "OTEL_METRIC_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "10000",
    "OTEL_LOGS_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "5000",
    "OTEL_TRACES_EXPORT_INTERVAL": "5000",

    "OTEL_LOG_USER_PROMPTS": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_ASSISTANT_RESPONSES": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_TOOL_DETAILS": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_TOOL_CONTENT": "0",
    "OTEL_LOG_RAW_API_BODIES": "0",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_OTEL_CONTENT_MAX_LENGTH": "1048576",

    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_SESSION_ID": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_VERSION": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_ACCOUNT_UUID": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_ENTRYPOINT": "true",
    "OTEL_METRICS_INCLUDE_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES": "true",

    "CLAUDE_CODE_PROPAGATE_TRACEPARENT": "1",
    "CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_FEEDBACK_SURVEY_FOR_OTEL": "1"
  }
}

The groups after the destination: export cadence, what event content is captured, which attributes ride on metrics, and trace-context propagation. Delete what you don’t want; the docs describe every variable.

The endpoint is the base URL of your OTLP HTTP endpoint, without /v1/traces; Claude Code appends the per-signal paths itself.

For a whole organisation, put the same env block into Claude Code’s managed settings file: /Library/Application Support/ClaudeCode/managed-settings.json on macOS; the docs list the other platforms.