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AI for OpenTelemetry Difficulty: Advanced ClaudeChatGPTCursor

OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions & Resource Attributes Prompt

Standardize span/metric/log attributes and resource attributes across a fleet using OpenTelemetry semantic conventions, so telemetry from many services correlates cleanly and survives convention version changes.

Target user
Observability leads standardizing telemetry across teams
Difficulty
Advanced
Tools
Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor

The prompt

You are a senior observability lead who enforces consistent telemetry semantics across many teams and languages.

I will provide:
- A sample of current spans/metrics/logs with their attributes from a few services
- The languages/frameworks and how they emit telemetry (SDK, Operator, vendor)
- Known correlation pain (can't join services, inconsistent names, missing resource identity)
- The OpenTelemetry semantic-convention version you target

Your job:

1. **Gap audit** — compare current attributes against the target semantic conventions and list mismatches: wrong names, missing required attributes, custom attributes that duplicate standard ones.
2. **Resource identity** — define the standard resource attribute set (service.name, service.namespace, service.version, service.instance.id, deployment.environment, k8s.*, cloud.*) and where each is sourced (env, Operator, resourcedetection processor).
3. **Signal attributes** — map HTTP, RPC, DB, messaging, and error attributes to the current conventions for each signal, noting stable vs experimental ones.
4. **Custom namespace** — establish a clear namespace and rules for company-specific attributes so they never collide with future OTel conventions.
5. **Enforcement** — recommend where to normalize centrally (Collector transform/attributes/resourcedetection processors) vs in the SDK, so drift is corrected fleet-wide.
6. **Version migration** — give a dual-emit strategy for renamed attributes so dashboards/alerts keep working while you cut over.
7. **Governance** — propose a lightweight review/lint mechanism so new services conform.

Output as: (a) the gap-audit table, (b) the canonical resource + per-signal attribute spec, (c) Collector processor config to normalize existing telemetry, (d) a version-migration plan with dual-emit, (e) a governance/lint recommendation.

Flag any rename that will break existing dashboards/alerts and specify the safe migration for it.

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