Backends

pi-otel is built on OpenTelemetry and exports via OTLP — the vendor-neutral wire protocol supported by every major observability platform. Point it at any OTLP-compatible receiver by setting endpoint and optionally protocol and headers.

Aspire Dashboard (default)

The .NET Aspire standalone dashboard is the zero-config default — an in-memory OTLP receiver with a UI for traces, metrics, and structured logs. No account, no cloud required.

Start from pi:

/otel start

Backend auto-detection: Aspire CLI → Docker → Podman. Force one with --driver=:

/otel start --driver=docker

Ports:

Signal	Endpoint
OTLP gRPC	http://localhost:4317
OTLP HTTP	http://localhost:4318
Dashboard UI	http://localhost:18888

Telemetry is in-memory only — restarting the dashboard clears all data. See samples/aspire/ for a minimal .pi/settings.json.

Traces:

Metrics:

Logs:

Grafana LGTM

otel-lgtm is a single Docker image that bundles Grafana, Tempo (traces), Mimir (metrics), and Loki (logs) — pre-wired with an OpenTelemetry Collector.

Start the stack:

docker compose up   # or: podman compose up

See samples/lgtm/compose.yaml for the full Compose file.

Connect pi-otel:

/otel connect http://localhost:4317

Ports:

Signal	Endpoint
OTLP gRPC	http://localhost:4317
OTLP HTTP	http://localhost:4318
Grafana UI	http://localhost:3000

The sample ships a pre-built Grafana dashboard (dashboard.json) with 8 panels: request rate, average duration, token usage by type, total tokens, tool calls per operation, p50/p95/p99 latency percentiles, and duration by model. Import it via Grafana → Dashboards → Import.

Traces in Tempo:

Metrics in Grafana:

Logs in Loki:

Other backends

Any OTLP-compatible receiver works. Set endpoint and (for authenticated cloud services) headers:

// .pi/settings.json
{
  "otel": {
    "endpoint": "https://api.honeycomb.io",
    "protocol": "http/protobuf",
    "headers": {
      "x-honeycomb-team": "<your-api-key>"
    }
  }
}

Or via env vars for ephemeral sessions:

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://... \
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="x-honeycomb-team=<key>" \
pi

Common OTLP targets: Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Jaeger (with OTLP receiver enabled), Tempo, Datadog (via the OTel Collector), or any self-hosted Collector.