OTelBin is a browser-based editor and verifier for OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline configuration, built for engineers and platform teams who write, review, or document collector configs and need to see what a pipeline actually wires together before it runs.

What it is

OTelBin is a web-based configuration tool for OpenTelemetry collector pipelines, published by the Dash0 organisation as dash0hq/otelbin and hosted at otelbin.io. It lives in the OpenTelemetry ecosystem, sits alongside the OpenTelemetry Collector itself, and is written in TypeScript under the Apache-2.0 licence. The project leans on the OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib toolchain: its metadata comes from the output of cfgmetadatagen in opentelemetry-collector-contrib, specifically a post-processed version of that output maintained in nimbushq/otel-validator.

The concrete problem it solves is that collector configuration is a dense YAML graph of receivers, processors, and exporters, and errors in that graph are usually discovered only when a collector refuses to start or silently drops signals. OTelBin replaces the plain text editor and manual cross-checking workflow with a hosted editor that draws the configured pipelines as swimlanes, validates the configuration and highlights errors, and lets a config be shared online so a colleague can inspect the same view rather than reasoning about the YAML in isolation.

Key capabilities

• Visualises configured OpenTelemetry Collector pipelines as swimlanes, so the shape of a pipeline is visible rather than inferred from YAML nesting.
• Validates a configuration and highlights errors, with validation executed against OpenTelemetry collectors through AWS Lambda.
• Shares OpenTelemetry Collector configurations online, which requires a login with a GitHub or Google account.
• Exposes shields.io-powered badges that reference a collector configuration, at the URL https://www.otelbin.io/badges/collector-config, with ready-made Markdown and HTML snippets for documentation.
• Covers the telemetry concerns the project tags itself with: editor, logging, metrics, tracing, pipeline, observability, OpenTelemetry, and the OpenTelemetry Collector.
• Runs as a Next.js application with TypeScript, Tailwind, ReactFlow for visualisation, Upstash Redis, Clerk for auth, and Vercel for hosting and privacy-friendly analytics.
• Offers a hosted option at otelbin.io maintained by the Dash0 people, so no local installation is required to use the editor.

Who uses it and how

• Platform and observability engineers who edit collector configuration and want validation feedback before the config reaches a running collector.
• Reviewers who need to check a proposed pipeline change, using the swimlane view instead of reading diffs of nested YAML.
• Documentation authors who embed the shields.io badge in Markdown or HTML so a page points at a live collector configuration.
• Teams that need to hand a configuration to a colleague for inspection, using the online sharing flow and its GitHub or Google login.
• Contributors to the project itself, who can develop locally using the instructions in CONTRIBUTING.md and open issues or pull requests against dash0hq/otelbin.

Getting started

The fastest route is the hosted instance at otelbin.io, which requires no installation. For local development, the repository's CONTRIBUTING.md documents how to develop the project locally.

How it compares

No comparable tool is named in the facts provided, so OTelBin stands alone in this registry. It is best understood as a companion to the OpenTelemetry Collector rather than a substitute for it, since the collector still performs the actual telemetry processing.

When to use it — and when not to

A self-hoster takes on a Next.js application plus Upstash Redis for storage, Clerk for authentication, Vercel for hosting, and AWS Lambda for configuration validation, which is a real operational footprint for a tool whose core value is visualisation and checking. Anyone who cannot send configuration to a hosted service, or who needs an entirely offline editor, should not rely on the otelbin.io instance for sharing. The project also carries 53 open issues and no release information in the facts supplied, and its README is short, so the hosted instance and the repository itself remain the best sources of current detail.