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Investigate: Auto-Detect OTel Developer Identity

IMPLEMENTATION RULES: Before implementing this plan, read and follow:

Status: Backlog​

Goal: Auto-detect the developer identity for OTel telemetry instead of requiring manual configuration via generate-devcontainer-identity.sh.

Priority: Low — revisit when setting up OTel again

Last Updated: 2026-04-07

Problem​

OTel telemetry needs three identity fields to tag metrics and events in Grafana dashboards:

  • DEVELOPER_ID — who is this developer
  • DEVELOPER_EMAIL — their email
  • PROJECT_NAME — what project are they working on

Currently these are set manually via generate-devcontainer-identity.sh <id> <email> <project>, stored as base64 in .devcontainer.secrets, and sourced by the OTel scripts.

Most developers never run this — so telemetry shows unknown for identity fields.

Available Auto-Detection Sources​

All three fields can be derived from data already available in the container:

FieldSourceHow
DEVELOPER_IDDEV_HOST_USER or git config user.nameHost env var (from remoteEnv) or git identity
DEVELOPER_EMAILgit config user.emailSet by config-git.sh on startup
PROJECT_NAMEgit remote get-url originExtract repo name: url | sed 's|.*/||;s|\.git$||'

The TS_HOSTNAME (synthetic telemetry hostname) is derived from these: dev-<developer_id>-<project>.

What Also Needs Review​

  • HOST_HOSTNAME in OTel configs (otelcol-lifecycle-config.yaml, otelcol-metrics-config.yaml) now reads the real machine hostname via config-host-info.sh and the DEV_HOST_HOSTNAME variable. Verify this flows correctly to Grafana dashboards.
  • HOST_USER and HOST_OS in OTel configs — now populated from DEV_HOST_* variables via config-host-info.sh. Verify Grafana filters work with the new values.
  • The host-platform-overview.yaml Grafana dashboard groups by host_os, host_user, host_hostname — test that these labels are populated correctly with the new detection.

Next Steps​

  • When OTel is set up again: auto-detect DEVELOPER_ID, DEVELOPER_EMAIL, PROJECT_NAME in entrypoint or config-telemetry-identity.sh
  • Remove or simplify generate-devcontainer-identity.sh (keep for override only)
  • Verify HOST_HOSTNAME, HOST_USER, HOST_OS flow correctly to OTel configs and Grafana dashboards with new DEV_HOST_* variables
  • Test Grafana dashboard filters with real data from multiple hosts