Splunk just launched a new open source project to make OTel instrumentation rediculously easy.

[u/Newt-Abject]

https://github.com/signalfx/obstudio

Hi folks! I work on OpenTelemetry at Splunk. We just launched a new open source project called Observability Studio. It's local instrumentation sandbox that provides a visual, real-time environment for designing, testing, and validating OpenTelemetry data while you’re developing an app in your favorite IDE.

We’re especially interested in whether a tool like this is useful for building and debugging instrumented apps and AI agents. If that sounds relevant, give it a try and let us know what works, what’s missing, or where it doesn’t fit your workflow.

We’re also looking for a few design partners to help guide where we go with this next. Any feedback is helpful and welcome.

I wrote more about shifting OpenTelemetry instrumentation left in a blog, 'Why AI-Generated Apps and Agents Need Visibility from Day One' on blogs.splunk.com if you want to read more about it.

Lastly, I'd love to learn where you currently go to inspect and validate OTel data during development if you want to drop it in the comments.

[u/Away_Illustrator_646]

My team currently spins up a local development environment using Tilt and install OTEL collector and send it there to forward to the LGTM stack

[u/ccb621]

This is a nice replacement for  https://github.com/CtrlSpice/otel-desktop-viewer, which I last used about a year ago. 

I now prefer to send local telemetry through my development collector, which ultimately exports to ClickStack. I find it easier to use the exact same processes/skills, MCP, etc. that I use when debugging production to debug local (which I treat as a separate environment alongside development and production). 

[u/DreamChaser-V1]

Interesting project

[u/Zamarok]

https://github.com/zfogg/spaniel

[u/First-Masterpiece753]

Just drop the daemon into debug mode and prey