Otel Profiles

What it does

When your agent uses it

• Setting up continuous profiling with OpenTelemetry
• Deploying the eBPF profiler on Linux hosts
• Kubernetes (DaemonSet
• Building a profiles pipeline

Example prompts

• “/otel-profiles”

Requirements

• Docker

Workflow steps

5 steps, taken from the first numbered list in SKILL.md.

1. 1Pick the image and pin. Use the latest release unless a needed key or component is missing from it (see the matrix). Alternatives: a…
2. 2Pick the environment.
3. 3Wire the pipeline. profiles pipeline: profiling receiver, memory_limiter first, enrichment processors, then otlp_grpc or otlp_http. Start…
4. 4Export and verify. Add debug (verbosity: basic) first: each reporter_interval it logs "resource profiles": N, "sample records": M; no…
5. 5Troubleshoot by exact error string: references/troubleshooting.md.

What it can do on your machine

Read from SKILL.md and the folder at commit 9900032. It shows what the files ask for, not the result of running them.

• Tool permissions

  Pre-approves nothing: there is no allowed-tools line, so your agent's usual permission prompts apply.

  From allowed-tools in the SKILL.md frontmatter.

• Runs code

  Shell commands in SKILL.md call:

  • docker

  From the folder's file list and the shell code blocks in SKILL.md.

• Network

  Links to these hosts (documentation or services it may open):

  • github.com
  • opentelemetry.io

  From URLs in SKILL.md, links to its own repository left out.

• Credentials

  Names no API keys, tokens, secrets or passwords.

  From names ending in _API_KEY, _TOKEN, _SECRET, _KEY or _PASSWORD in SKILL.md.

Context cost

Otel Profiles loads about 1.8k tokens when it runs, and up to ~7.7k if it reads all its reference files. Until then it costs about 148 tokens; SKILL.md has 582 words of instructions outside code blocks.

Always · name and description, kept in context so the agent knows when to use it

~148

When it runs · the whole SKILL.md, loaded when a task matches

~1.8k

With references · SKILL.md plus every file in references/, read only if the agent opens them

~7.7k

Estimates: characters ÷ 4, the usual rule of thumb; real counts depend on the model's tokenizer. Scripts and assets cost tokens only if the agent reads them.

Safety

Automated static check — not a guarantee. Review scripts before installing. It scans the text of SKILL.md for risky patterns (piping downloads into a shell, reading credential files, hidden Unicode, destructive commands); files beside SKILL.md are not scanned.

SKILL.md

The full file from ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills at commit 9900032, republished under its Apache-2.0 licence (© ollygarden). 582 words, ~1,761 tokens.

name

otel-profiles

description

OpenTelemetry profiles signal and the eBPF profiler (otelcol-ebpf-profiler, `profiling` receiver). Use when setting up continuous profiling with OpenTelemetry, deploying the eBPF profiler on Linux hosts, Docker, or Kubernetes (DaemonSet, kind, k3d), building a profiles pipeline, sending OTLP profiles to Pyroscope, Grafana Cloud Profiles, or another backend, getting flame graphs from OTel, enabling off-CPU profiling, or debugging profiler errors about tracefs, PID namespaces, missing pods, or the service.profilesSupport feature gate. Not for SDK tracing or metrics setup.

docker run -d --name otel-ebpf-profiler --privileged --pid=host \
  -v /sys/kernel/tracing:/sys/kernel/tracing \
  -v "$PWD/config.yaml:/etc/otelcol/config.yaml:ro" \
  otel/opentelemetry-collector-ebpf-profiler:0.162.0 \
  --config=/etc/otelcol/config.yaml --feature-gates=+service.profilesSupport

receivers:
  profiling:
    samples_per_second: 20      # default
processors:
  memory_limiter:
    check_interval: 1s
    limit_mib: 800
    spike_limit_mib: 200
exporters:
  debug:
    verbosity: basic
  otlp_grpc:
    endpoint: profiles-backend:4317   # backend-specific, see references/backends.md
    tls:
      insecure: true
service:
  pipelines:
    profiles:
      receivers: [profiling]
      processors: [memory_limiter]
      exporters: [otlp_grpc, debug]

© ollygarden, Apache-2.0. Rendered from Markdown: HTML in the file is shown as text, images as links, and headings moved down two levels. Raw file

Files

SKILL.md and 6 other files (references) in skills/otel-profiles of ollygarden/opentelemetry-agent-skills.

• SKILL.md
• evals/evals.json
• references/backends.md
• references/kubernetes.md
• references/nested-containers.md
• references/receiver.md
• references/troubleshooting.md

Open the folder on GitHubat commit 9900032