Observability Summit North America 2026

The OpenTelemetry Collector is powerful, but the "debug exporter" only shows raw output. What if you could see your OpenTelemetry logs - with structure, filters, and context - right in your terminal?

This talk introduces Gonzo, an open-source, OTLP-native terminal UI that visualizes logs from the Collector or any OTLP-capable source in real time. Learn how to validate both source instrumentation, and Collector pipelines - including components like filelog, k8sattributes, and transform - without a backend.

Whether debugging, testing configs, or teaching OTel, Gonzo offers a faster, clearer way to understand your telemetry as it flows.

Key Takeaways:
- Validate source instrumentation and Collector pipelines end-to-end
- See enriched OTel logs with structure and context in the terminal
- Debug and iterate on OTel configs faster - no backend required