otel-direct-betterstack

Nullstone capability that configures an application's OpenTelemetry SDK to export logs, traces, and metrics directly to Better Stack — no OTEL collector required.

Attach it to an app and it injects the standard OTEL env vars. The OTLP endpoint and Authorization header come from a connected betterstack datastore (aws-betterstack / gcp-betterstack); the tuning knobs come from capability variables.

For the collector-based alternative (cluster-wide delivery, shared pipelines), see k8s-otel-betterstack-extender — don't attach both to the same app, since both set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT-adjacent configuration.

Connections

Name	Contract	Required	Purpose
betterstack	datastore/*/betterstack	yes	The Better Stack credentials (ingesting host + source token).

The contract is provider-wildcarded: connect aws-betterstack (token in AWS Secrets Manager) or gcp-betterstack (token in GCP Secret Manager). The module detects the cloud from the secret identifier and reads the token accordingly at apply time.

Injected env vars

Plain env vars (via the env output):

Name	Source
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT	https://<ingesting_host> from the datastore
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL	fixed: http/protobuf (Better Stack ingests OTLP over HTTP)
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_COMPRESSION	compression variable
OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER	logs_exporter variable
OTEL_METRICS_EXEMPLAR_FILTER	metrics_exemplar_filter variable
OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER	metrics_exporter variable
OTEL_METRIC_EXPORT_INTERVAL	metric_export_interval variable
OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER	traces_exporter variable
OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER	traces_sampler variable

Secret env vars (via the secrets output):

Name	Source
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS	Authorization=Bearer <source_token> read from the datastore's secret

OTEL SDKs append the per-signal path (/v1/logs, /v1/traces, /v1/metrics) to OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT when using OTLP over HTTP, matching Better Stack's documented endpoints.

Variables

Name	Default	Description
logs_exporter	otlp,console	Comma-separated log exporters, or none. Default keeps logs on stdout too.
compression	gzip	OTLP payload compression: gzip or none.
metrics_exemplar_filter	always_off	always_off, always_on, or trace_based. Better Stack does not use exemplars.
metrics_exporter	otlp	Comma-separated metric exporters, or none to disable metrics.
metric_export_interval	60000	Milliseconds between metric exports.
traces_exporter	otlp	Comma-separated trace exporters, or none to disable traces.
traces_sampler	parentbased_always_on	OTEL sampler; pair ratio samplers with OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG on the app.

Logs caveat: these env vars configure the SDK's log pipeline, but whether app log lines flow through it depends on the language. Java's agent and Python's auto-instrumentation (OTEL_PYTHON_LOGGING_AUTO_INSTRUMENTATION_ENABLED=true) honor OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER directly; Node and Go typically need an explicit log-bridge appender in code.

Outputs

Name	Description
env	list(object({ name, value })) — plain env vars injected into the app.
secrets	list(object({ name, value })) — secret env vars (the OTLP Authorization header). Sensitive.