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Isthmus has built-in OpenTelemetry (OTel) support for distributed tracing and metrics. When enabled, every SQL query and MCP tool call emits traces and metrics to your OTel collector — Jaeger, Grafana Tempo, Datadog, Honeycomb, or any OTLP-compatible backend.

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Enabling OpenTelemetry

Set the --otel CLI flag or OTEL_ENABLED environment variable: 
isthmus --otel

OTEL_ENABLED=true isthmus
At startup, Isthmus logs that OTel is active: 
{"level":"INFO","msg":"opentelemetry enabled"}

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Configuring the exporter

Isthmus uses OTLP gRPC exporters for both traces and metrics. The OTel SDK reads standard environment variables to configure the exporter endpoint:
Env varDefaultDescription
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINTlocalhost:4317OTLP gRPC endpoint for traces and metrics
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT(falls back to above)Override endpoint for traces only
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT(falls back to above)Override endpoint for metrics only
These are standard OTel SDK environment variables — not Isthmus-specific. See the OTel SDK docs for the full list.

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Example: local Jaeger

# Start Jaeger (all-in-one, with OTLP gRPC on :4317)
docker run -d --name jaeger \
  -p 16686:16686 \
  -p 4317:4317 \
  jaegertracing/all-in-one:latest

# Start Isthmus with OTel
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=localhost:4317 \
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb \
isthmus --otel
Then open http://localhost:16686 to see traces.

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Example: Grafana Tempo + Prometheus

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=localhost:4317 \
DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb \
isthmus --otel

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Example: MCP client config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "isthmus": {
      "command": "isthmus",
      "args": ["--otel"],
      "env": {
        "DATABASE_URL": "postgres://user:pass@localhost:5432/mydb",
        "OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT": "localhost:4317"
      }
    }
  }
}

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Traces

Isthmus emits two types of spans:

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Query spans

Every SQL query executed through the query tool creates a span:
AttributeTypeDescription
db.systemstringAlways "postgresql"
db.operation.namestring"query"
db.statementstringThe SQL statement
db.response.rowsintNumber of rows returned (on success)
If the query fails (validation error, execution error), the error is recorded on the span.

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Tool call spans

Every MCP tool call (discover, describe_table, query) creates a span:
AttributeTypeDescription
mcp.toolstringTool name (e.g. "query", "describe_table")
errorbooltrue if the tool call failed
Tool call spans are parents of query spans — so a query tool call shows the full lifecycle: MCP dispatch, SQL validation, query execution, and masking.

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Metrics

Isthmus exposes four metrics:
MetricTypeUnitDescription
isthmus.query.countCounter—Total number of SQL queries executed
isthmus.query.durationHistogrammsSQL query execution time
isthmus.query.errorsCounter—Total number of failed queries (validation + execution)
isthmus.tool.durationHistogrammsMCP tool call duration (end-to-end)

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Useful queries

If your backend supports PromQL or a similar query language: 
# Query throughput (queries per second)
rate(isthmus_query_count_total[5m])

# Error rate
rate(isthmus_query_errors_total[5m]) / rate(isthmus_query_count_total[5m])

# p95 query latency
histogram_quantile(0.95, rate(isthmus_query_duration_bucket[5m]))

# p99 tool call latency
histogram_quantile(0.99, rate(isthmus_tool_duration_bucket[5m]))

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Service resource

Isthmus registers itself with the following OTel resource attributes:
AttributeValue
service.nameisthmus
service.versionBuild version (e.g. v0.5.0)
These appear in your tracing UI and can be used to filter traces.

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Graceful shutdown

When Isthmus receives SIGTERM or SIGINT, it flushes all pending traces and metrics before exiting (with a 5-second timeout). This ensures no data is lost during graceful shutdown.

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When OTel is disabled

When --otel is not set (the default), all tracing and metrics use no-op implementations. There is zero overhead — no goroutines, no allocations, no network calls. You can safely leave OTel disabled in development.

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Semantic conventions

Isthmus follows the OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions for database spans:
  • db.system = "postgresql" (database semconv)
  • db.operation.name for the operation type
  • db.statement for the SQL query
  • db.response.rows for the result size