# Distributed tracing

A step of the [Cloud application](https://gradus.kazet.blog/tree/cloud-application) tree on Gradus, in the Observability area: Logs, metrics, traces, alerts.

Page: https://gradus.kazet.blog/tree/cloud-application/step/distributed-tracing

Add distributed tracing with OpenTelemetry so a single request can be followed across every service it touches.

Usually comes after: [Metrics](https://gradus.kazet.blog/tree/cloud-application/step/metrics).

Leads to: [Alerting](https://gradus.kazet.blog/tree/cloud-application/step/alerting), [Cost monitoring](https://gradus.kazet.blog/tree/cloud-application/step/cost-monitoring).

## Prompt for your AI assistant

```
Instrument the application with OpenTelemetry distributed tracing, propagate trace context across service boundaries and export spans to a collector.
```

Every step of the tree: https://gradus.kazet.blog/tree/cloud-application/llms.txt