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Cover image for 🚀 Introducing OTel Sandbox: Your Zero-Config OpenTelemetry Playground
Akshit Zatakia
Akshit Zatakia

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🚀 Introducing OTel Sandbox: Your Zero-Config OpenTelemetry Playground

#opensource #go #analytics #opentelemetry

Stop wrestling with complex OpenTelemetry setups. Start experimenting in seconds.

If you've ever tried to set up OpenTelemetry for the first time, you know the pain. Multiple components, complex configurations, version compatibility nightmares, and hours spent just to see your first trace. What if I told you there's a better way?

Meet OTel Sandbox – a developer-first tool that gets you from zero to observability in under 30 seconds.

🎯 The Problem Every Developer Faces

Picture this: You want to experiment with OpenTelemetry, but first you need to:

  • Install and configure an OTel Collector
  • Set up Jaeger for trace visualization
  • Configure Prometheus for metrics
  • Write YAML configs for each component
  • Debug networking issues between services
  • Spend your weekend reading documentation instead of coding

OTel Sandbox eliminates all of this friction.

✨ What Makes OTel Sandbox Special?

🏃‍♂️ Lightning Fast Setup

# That's it. Seriously.
./otel-sandbox up
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In 30 seconds, you have a complete observability stack running locally:
✅ OpenTelemetry Collector (configured & running)
✅ Jaeger UI (http://localhost:16686)
✅ Prometheus (http://localhost:9090)
✅ All networking configured automatically

🔍 Built-in Verification

Wonder if everything is working? Don't guess:

./otel-sandbox verify
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This sends real telemetry data through your stack and confirms:
✅ Traces are being collected
✅ Metrics are being recorded
✅ Logs are being captured
✅ All exporters are functioning

📊 Smart Data Export

View your collected telemetry data in multiple formats:

# Quick summary view
./otel-sandbox export --format summary

# Full JSON export for analysis
./otel-sandbox export --format json
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🎛️ Effortless Process Management 

# Check what's running
./otel-sandbox status

# Clean shutdown of all components
./otel-sandbox down
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🛠️ Real-World Use Cases

🧪 Experiment with New SDKs
Testing a new language SDK? Spin up OTel Sandbox, point your app at localhost:4317, and immediately see traces flowing through Jaeger.

🎓 Learning OpenTelemetry
Perfect for workshops, tutorials, or just understanding how the pieces fit together. No complex setup means more time learning concepts.

🐛 Debug Integration Issues
Having problems with your production OTel setup? Use OTel Sandbox as a known-good reference environment to isolate issues.

📚 Demo Creation
Need to create a demo for your team? OTel Sandbox gives you a reproducible environment that works everywhere.

🏗️ Architecture That Just Works
OTel Sandbox bundles battle-tested components:

Your App → OTel Collector → Jaeger (traces)
                        → Prometheus (metrics)  
                        → File Export (logs)
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Everything is pre-configured with sensible defaults, but you can still customize configurations if needed.

🚀 Get Started in 3 Steps

Step 1: Download

Download the binary as per your platform (for windows you need to build it manually):
https://github.com/Akshit-Zatakia/otel-sandbox/releases/tag/v1.0.0-release

Step 2: Unpack the file
Unpack the tar archive and navigate into the extracted folder.

Step 3: Launch

./otel-sandbox-<os>-<arch> up
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Step 4: Explore

Note: If this doesn't work due to restrictions, you can build the binary by clonning this repository and use go build command

💡 Pro Tips

Quick Health Check
Always run ./otel-sandbox status before starting development to see what's running.

Clean Slate
Use ./otel-sandbox down between experiments to ensure clean state.

Data Analysis
Export data with ./otel-sandbox export --format json and pipe it to jq for analysis:

./otel-sandbox export --format json | jq '.traces[0].resourceSpans[0].scopeSpans[0].spans[0]'
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🔮 What's Coming Next?

We're constantly improving OTel Sandbox:

  • 🔍 Hints Feature (Coming Soon): Intelligent suggestions for optimizing your telemetry setup
  • 📦 More Export Formats: Prometheus, CSV, and custom formats
  • 🎨 Enhanced UI: Better visualization of your telemetry pipeline
  • 🔧 Advanced Configuration: Easy customization for power users

🎉 Join the Community

OTel Sandbox is open source and built by developers, for developers. We'd love your feedback:

⭐ Star us on GitHub
🐛 Report issues or request features
🤝 Contribute improvements

🏁 Stop Fighting Setup, Start Building

The future of observability is here, and it shouldn't require a PhD in YAML configuration.

OTel Sandbox gets you from curious about OpenTelemetry to shipping instrumented code in minutes, not hours.

Ready to transform your observability workflow?

Built with ❤️ for the developer community. Because your time should be spent building amazing things, not fighting configuration files.

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