Observability

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Continuum emits stable :telemetry events under the [:continuum, ...] prefix. See Continuum.Telemetry.events/0 for the complete list.

OpenTelemetry

Continuum does not depend on OpenTelemetry directly. To export spans, add and configure the OpenTelemetry packages in your application, then attach the bridge after your exporter is configured:

{:ok, _handler_id} = Continuum.OpenTelemetry.setup()

The bridge creates short spans instead of multi-day spans:

  • continuum.run_attempt starts on [:continuum, :run, :started] and ends when the attempt suspends, completes, fails, is cancelled, or loses its lease.
  • continuum.activity_attempt starts on [:continuum, :activity, :started] and ends when the attempt completes, fails, or is retried.

Every span includes continuum.run_id. If the run has a persisted W3C traceparent in continuum_runs.trace_context, each run-attempt span also links back to that original trace context using OpenTelemetry span links. This is how resumed attempts remain correlated without keeping one long span open for the full lifetime of the workflow.

In Postgres mode, activities execute in ActivityWorker.Worker processes after the engine has suspended. Most activity-attempt spans therefore show up as sibling roots, not children of the run-attempt span. Use continuum.run_id to correlate them in your backend. Inline in-memory activity spans can be children of the run-attempt span because they happen in the same process.

Timer, signal, activity scheduling, and idempotency-hit events are added as span events on the active run-attempt span when they happen in the same process. Some runtime events happen in separate processes after the run has suspended; those still carry continuum.run_id as attributes for backend correlation.

Child workflow and continue_as_new lifecycle events are recorded as span events on the originating run-attempt span when that span is active. Continuum does not currently create a separate long-lived continuum.child_attempt span; the child's own work is represented by its own continuum.run_attempt spans and correlated by run id, parent run id, and trace context.

Snapshot telemetry keeps the stable [:continuum, :snapshot, :taken] and [:continuum, :snapshot, :skipped] names. :taken metadata includes format_version and compacted_prefix_length so operators can distinguish v0.4 format-versioned snapshots from older unversioned payloads.

The current CI suite tests the bridge with a fake tracer so Continuum can keep OpenTelemetry optional. Before tagging a release, run a smoke test in an application that includes :opentelemetry, :opentelemetry_api, and your exporter.