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The console exporter is the fastest way to verify your instrumentation is firing. No backend, no auth, no network — spans print straight to your terminal.

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Switch the exporter type

const config: TelemetryConfig = {
  serverName: 'my-server',
  serverVersion: '1.0.0',
  exporterType: 'console',
  // exporterEndpoint, exporterAuth, samplingRate — all optional / ignored
}

instrumentServer(server, config)
When exporterType: 'console':
  • Trace exporter is ConsoleSpanExporter from @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-base.
  • No metric reader is attached — metrics are dropped silently. Use console for trace verification only.
  • Auth and endpoint config are ignored.

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What you’ll see

Each span prints as JSON when it ends: 
{
  traceId: 'a3b...',
  parentId: undefined,
  name: 'tools/call calculate-bmi',
  id: '...',
  kind: 0,
  timestamp: 1747000000000000,
  duration: 1432,
  attributes: {
    'mcp.method.name': 'tools/call',
    'mcp.tool.name': 'calculate-bmi',
    'mcp.tool.title': 'BMI Calculator',
    'mcp.tool.description': 'Calculate Body Mass Index',
    'mcp.request.id': 'b9c...',
    'mcp.session.id': 'f3a...',
    'client.address': '127.0.0.1',
    'mcp.operation.success': true,
    'mcp.operation.duration': 1
  },
  status: { code: 1 },
  events: [],
  links: []
}
This is the same data the OTLP exporter would ship — just rendered locally.

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Use cases

Verify a new tool

Confirm spans appear with the right attributes before pointing at prod.

Debug a custom span

See exactly what your startActiveSpan calls are emitting.

Test redaction

Run with enableArgumentCollection: true + your dataProcessors and inspect the printed attributes.

CI smoke test

Run a sample tool call in CI and grep for expected attributes.

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Sample CI assertion

test/smoke.ts
import { spawn } from 'node:child_process'

const proc = spawn('node', ['dist/server.js'], { stdio: 'pipe' })
let stderr = ''
proc.stderr.on('data', (d) => (stderr += d.toString()))

// drive a tool call via your MCP client of choice...

proc.kill('SIGTERM')
proc.on('exit', () => {
  if (!stderr.includes("'mcp.tool.name': 'calculate-bmi'")) {
    process.exit(1)
  }
})

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When you’re ready for the real backend

Switch to otlp-http (or remove exporterType entirely — it’s the default): 
- exporterType: 'console',
+ exporterEndpoint: 'https://otel.sedata-ai.tech/v1',
+ exporterAuth: { type: 'bearer', token: process.env.SEDATA_TOKEN! },

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Next

Authentication

Wire up the live exporter.

Troubleshooting

Common issues and fixes.