Three connected blocks labeled Observe, Decide, and Act.

Baggage carries context across an explicit boundary

OpenTelemetry baggage is a context-associated collection of string key-value pairs. It lets information known near a request’s entry point travel to downstream operations: a deployment region or a rollout cohort, for example. Unlike a span attribute, baggage is intended for propagation. Unlike trace context, it describes application-selected information rather than the identifiers and flags connecting spans. These mechanisms can travel together without being the same data structure. ...

March 27, 2028 · 4 min · XB Field Notes