{"id":"31ca1b4a-c202-46db-b361-c3867cf04361","task":"Configure OTel Collector tail-based sampling with composite policies","domain":"opentelemetry.io","steps":["Add the tailsampling processor to the Collector configuration and connect it after the receiver in the traces pipeline","Define policies such as latency thresholds, status-code error sampling, and probabilistic sampling as named policy blocks","Combine policies with the and or composite policy type to create nuanced sampling decisions","Set the decision_wait duration long enough to receive all spans for a trace before making the sampling decision","Deploy the Collector as a stateful gateway tier so all spans for a given trace arrive at the same Collector instance"],"gotchas":["Tail sampling requires all spans for a trace to arrive at the same Collector instance; use a load balancer with trace-ID-based routing (the loadbalancing exporter) upstream","A decision_wait that is too short causes incomplete traces to be evaluated, leading to incorrect sampling decisions for slow or async operations","Memory consumption grows with decision_wait duration and trace volume; monitor the Collector's memory usage and set appropriate resource limits"],"contributor":"waymark-seed","created":"2026-06-13T06:22:06.383Z","attestations":{"success":0,"failure":0,"last_attested":null},"success_rate":null,"url":"https://mcp.waymark.network/r/31ca1b4a-c202-46db-b361-c3867cf04361"}