opentrace

Overview

OpenTrace provides a self-hosted observability solution specifically designed for AI coding assistants. It features a custom columnar log store optimized for production environments, running on a $4/month VM. The system captures detailed application metrics, errors, and traces, exposing them to AI agents through MCP tools without requiring traditional dashboards. This enables AI assistants to directly investigate production issues, analyze performance bottlenecks, and understand system behavior without context switching.

Try asking AI

After installing, here are 5 things you can ask your AI assistant:

• logs

  Full-text log search, distributed trace assembly, N+1 detection

  Try:Show me logs from the last hour with level ERRORTry:Find traces for slow payments endpointTry:Compare error rates between last week and this week
• errors

  Error grouping by fingerprint, user impact scoring, stack traces

  Try:What errors are happening in production?Try:Investigate the most frequent errorTry:Show me errors affecting users in the last hour
• database

  Postgres introspection, EXPLAIN plans, lock and connection analysis

  Try:Why is the payments query slow?Try:Check for N+1 queries in the checkout processTry:Analyze index usage on the orders table
• watches

  Threshold alerts on error rate, latency, request volume

  Try:Set up a watcher for checkout error rate > 1%Try:Show me all active alertsTry:Dismiss the database connection alert
• overview

  System health, alerts, incident timeline, settings

  Try:What's the current system status?Try:Show me the incident timeline for todayTry:Diagnose high memory usage
• analytics

  Traffic patterns, endpoint performance, time-series analysis

  Try:Show me traffic patterns for the last 24 hoursTry:Which endpoints are slowest?Try:Show me a heatmap of API usage by time
• code

  Code risk scores, test generation, blast radius

  Try:What's the risk score for modifying this file?Try:Generate tests for the most common production errorsTry:Show me the blast radius for this change
• healthchecks

  HTTP endpoint monitoring with uptime tracking

  Try:Show me health check status for all endpointsTry:Create a health check for the APITry:What's the uptime for the checkout endpoint?
• servers

  Server and process metrics (CPU, memory, GC)

  Try:Show me server metricsTry:What's the CPU usage?Try:Check for high memory usage
• connectors

  Manage database connectors (Postgres, MySQL, etc.)

  Try:List all database connectorsTry:Create a new database connectorTry:Test the production database connection
• setup

  SDK setup assistant — detects framework, provides config

  Try:Set up opentrace for my projectTry:Configure opentrace for my Node.js appTry:Help me install the SDK
• deep_capture

  Per-request deep capture: SQL, HTTP, emails, audit trail

  Try:Show me SQL captures for slow queriesTry:Find audit trail entries for user deletionTry:Get PII configuration settings

Comparable tools

Installation

ssh root@your-server
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adham90/opentrace/main/scripts/install.sh | bash

docker run -d --name opentrace \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v opentrace-data:/data \
  -e OPENTRACE_LISTEN_ADDR=0.0.0.0:8080 \
  ghcr.io/adham90/opentrace:latest

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "opentrace": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@opentrace-sdk/mcp"],
      "env": {
        "OPENTRACE_URL": "https://your-server.com",
        "OPENTRACE_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

FAQ

How does OpenTrace integrate with my existing application?

OpenTrace provides SDKs for Ruby and Node.js that capture structured logs, request lifecycle data, error traces, and runtime metrics - all sent as flat JSON via async I/O without blocking your application.

What kind of data can OpenTrace capture from my application?

The SDK captures detailed request lifecycle data including SQL queries with EXPLAIN plans, external API calls, cache hits/misses, view rendering times, email deliveries, file operations, audit trails, and a waterfall timeline - all in one log entry.

On Hacker News

Recent discussion from the developer community.

• Show HN: OpenTrace – Self-hosted observability server with 75 MCP tools▲ 3💬 1
  Story by adham900 · 2026-02-26

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