OTel Night Berlin v2026.09: Go Compile-Time Instrumentation

Join us for the next OTel Night Berlin at Sony Interactive Entertainment. This edition follows the complete telemetry journey, from instrumenting a Go application to using agents to understand its behavior from the telemetry stored in an observability backend.

Kemal Akkoyun will begin by introducing compile-time instrumentation for Go. He will explain how instrumentation can become part of the build process, allowing applications and their dependencies to produce OpenTelemetry data without requiring manual changes throughout the source code.

Juraci Paixão Kröhling will then demonstrate how a coding agent equipped with the otel-go skill can instrument and configure a Go application. The agent will use otelc and other OpenTelemetry Go capabilities to inspect the application, select an appropriate instrumentation strategy, configure telemetry export, and verify the result.

Finally, Cedric Ziel will follow the telemetry into the backend. He will show how agents can retrieve actual telemetry, investigate application behavior, and explain what is happening inside a running system.

Together, the sessions cover the full arc: understanding compile-time instrumentation, using a coding agent to apply OpenTelemetry, producing telemetry, and using another agent to investigate that telemetry.

Whether you work on Go services, observability platforms, developer tooling, or agent-assisted operations, this event offers a practical look at how these technologies connect.

Advance registration is required for access to the Sony offices. Registration is limited to 60 participants.

Talks

Under the hood of compile-time instrumentation for Go

Kemal Akkoyun

Kemal will introduce compile-time instrumentation for Go and explain how a build-time approach can add OpenTelemetry to applications and their dependencies. The session will examine how compile-time instrumentation works, where it fits among the available Go instrumentation approaches, and what engineers should consider before adopting it.

Instrumenting Go with coding agents and the otel-go skill

Juraci Paixão Kröhling

Coding agents can modify a Go application, but that does not mean they understand the latest OpenTelemetry application programming interfaces (APIs), module versions, instrumentation libraries, or configuration options.

Juraci will demonstrate how the otel-go agent skill gives a coding agent the technical context it needs to instrument and configure a real Go application. The session will cover using otelc for compile-time instrumentation, selecting appropriate instrumentation libraries, configuring the OpenTelemetry software development kit (SDK), and verifying that the resulting application produces useful, connected telemetry.

The focus is not simply asking an agent to add observability. It is about giving the agent a maintained body of OpenTelemetry knowledge so it can choose and implement the right approach for the application.

Investigating application telemetry with agents

Cedric Ziel, Grafana Labs

Cedric will demonstrate how agents can retrieve actual telemetry from an observability backend and use it to explain application behavior. The session will show how an agent can investigate telemetry, connect the available evidence, and provide engineers with relevant operational context.