Three primitives

Three functions. That's it.

01 trace()

Trace any function

Wrap a handler. Autotel records the spans, the errors, and the request context.

import { trace } from 'autotel';

export const checkout = trace((ctx) =>
  async (req, res) => {
    const result = await charge(req.body);
    return res.json(result);
  },
);

02 track()

Emit product events

Fan out to PostHog, webhooks, or any subscriber. Same call, every backend.

import { track } from 'autotel';

track('order.created', {
  userId: req.user.id,
  amount: result.total,
  currency: 'GBP',
});

03 log()

One canonical log line

Add context through the request, then emit one structured event when it ends.

import { getRequestLogger } from 'autotel';

const log = getRequestLogger(ctx);
log.set({ userId, plan, source });
log.emitNow();

Before / after

Same telemetry. Under a quarter of the code.

Autotel stays fully OpenTelemetry-compatible. You stop writing the plumbing.

raw OpenTelemetry ~36 lines

import { trace as otelTrace } from '@opentelemetry/api';
import { NodeSDK } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-node';
import { OTLPTraceExporter }
  from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http';
import { Resource } from '@opentelemetry/resources';
import { SemanticResourceAttributes }
  from '@opentelemetry/semantic-conventions';

const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  resource: new Resource({
    [SemanticResourceAttributes.SERVICE_NAME]: 'my-api',
  }),
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: 'http://localhost:4318/v1/traces',
  }),
});
sdk.start();

const tracer = otelTrace.getTracer('my-api');

export async function checkout(req, res) {
  const span = tracer.startSpan('checkout');
  try {
    const result = await processCheckout(req.body);
    span.setStatus({ code: 1 });
    return res.json(result);
  } catch (err) {
    span.recordException(err);
    span.setStatus({ code: 2 });
    throw err;
  } finally {
    span.end();
  }
}

autotel 8 lines

import { init, trace } from 'autotel';

init({ service: 'my-api', endpoint: 'http://localhost:4318' });

export const checkout = trace((ctx) =>
  async (req, res) => {
    const result = await processCheckout(req.body);
    return res.json(result);
  },
);

Surface coverage

Wire it once. Run it wherever Node, Bun, or the edge runs.

01 Frameworks

• Express →
• Fastify →
• NestJS →
• Hono →
• TanStack Start →
• Cloudflare Workers →
• Edge runtimes →
• Adapters →

02 Integrations

• Prisma →
• Drizzle →
• Mongoose →
• AWS →
• MCP →
• Sentry →
• Datadog →
• PostHog →

Ready to instrument?

One install. One init(). Every span, every backend.

Quick start → Read the intro

autotel · Apache-2.0 licensed · GitHub · Changelog © 2026