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Tracing: zero distributed propagation (no client spans) + no error status on spans #6

Description

@angelluismula

Surfaced by the Firefly platform observability E2E audit (2026-06-25, firefly-prod).

H6 — No distributed trace propagation

Every trace is confined to a single service; there is no cross-service correlation.

Evidence (GreptimeDB traces.opentelemetry_traces, firefly-prod):

  • Span kinds present: only SPAN_KIND_SERVER and SPAN_KIND_INTERNAL0 CLIENT/PRODUCER/CONSUMER spans.
  • Every trace_id maps to exactly one service_name (0 multi-service traces over 15 min).
  • Instrumentation scope is org.springframework.boot, not the OTel Java agent.

Without client spans + W3C traceparent propagation there is no root-cause diagnosis across services.

Ask: enable client auto-instrumentation (RestTemplate/WebClient/Feign/messaging) and W3C trace-context propagation in the observability foundation so outbound calls create CLIENT/PRODUCER spans and propagate traceparent.

M3 — Spans never carry error status

span_status_code = STATUS_CODE_ERROR count is 0 despite real production traffic and 5xx/exceptions.

Ask: ensure the instrumentation sets span.setStatus(ERROR) / recordException on 5xx responses and unhandled exceptions, so error spans are queryable/alertable.

Coverage context: traces flow for 76/78 firefly-prod services with complete k8s labels; these are completeness/quality gaps, not a transport break.

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