OpenTelemetry Bootstrap

Features

• Parent based sampling driven by OTEL_SAMPLER_RATIO, matching upstream best practices.

• Pretty console exporter that mirrors the dashboards we use during development while keeping production clean.

• Optional OTLP exporter activated with OTEL_EXPORTER_ENABLED=true .

• Express + Nest instrumentation with custom attributes for authenticated users and request bodies.

Installation

1. Generate the bootstrap file with the Shadcn CLI, pointed at the Shaaban registry:

   pnpm dlx shadcn@latest add https://registry.shaaban.com/r/open-telemetry.json

2. Add the recommended defaults to your .env file:

   # OTEL_LOG_FORMAT="simple" OTEL_LOG_FORMAT="advanced" APP_NAME="Nest" OTEL_EXPORTER_ENABLED="false"
   OTEL_SAMPLER_RATIO=1.0
   
   # OTEL_EXPORTER_URL="http://localhost:4318/v1/traces"

3. Ensure the bootstrap runs before your server starts by configuring NODE_OPTIONS:

   NODE_OPTIONS="--require ./otel.bootstrap.ts"

If you prefer to keep the bootstrap file inside the repository, move it after generation and adjust the import path.

Environment variables

• APP_NAME — displayed in logs to differentiate between services.

• OTEL_SAMPLER_RATIO — decimal between 0 and 1 controlling trace sampling (for example 0.25).

• OTEL_EXPORTER_ENABLED — set to true to enable OTLP exporting.

• OTEL_EXPORTER_URL — OTLP endpoint (e.g. https://api.honeycomb.io/v1/traces).

• OTEL_LOG_FORMAT — simple (single line) or advanced (grouped console output).

The bootstrap relies on dotenv to load environment variables, mirroring the setup in our NestJS starters.

Further reading

The implementation follows the patterns documented in

and we periodically sync improvements from the upstream shadcn docs. For production deployments, pair these defaults with centralized log ingestion and metrics from your infrastructure provider.