/distributed-tracing

---
name: distributed-tracing
description: Implement distributed tracing with Jaeger and Tempo to track requests across microservices and identify performance bottlenecks. Use when debugging microservices, analyzing request flows, or implementing observability for distributed systems.
---

# Distributed Tracing

Implement distributed tracing with Jaeger and Tempo for request flow visibility across microservices.

## Purpose

Track requests across distributed systems to understand latency, dependencies, and failure points.

## When to Use

- Debug latency issues
- Understand service dependencies
- Identify bottlenecks
- Trace error propagation
- Analyze request paths

## Detailed patterns and worked examples

Detailed pattern documentation lives in `references/details.md`. Read that file when the navigation tier above is insufficient.

## Best Practices

1. **Sample appropriately** (1-10% in production)
2. **Add meaningful tags** (user_id, request_id)
3. **Propagate context** across all service boundaries
4. **Log exceptions** in spans
5. **Use consistent naming** for operations
6. **Monitor tracing overhead** (<1% CPU impact)