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arbpulse_github/openspec/changes/gate-sentry-spans/proposal.md
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Mauricio Barragan a5c83ee026 feat(observability): gate Sentry tracing spans behind SENTRY_TRACING
Spans are now created and exported to Sentry only when SENTRY_TRACING is enabled (default off), keeping 24/7 operation within the free-tier span quota. Error monitoring stays always-on. Includes OpenSpec change gate-sentry-spans (proposal, design, specs, tasks).

Co-authored-by: Cursor <cursoragent@cursor.com>
2026-07-16 12:54:15 -06:00

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Markdown

## Why
Arb Pulse is moving to a 24/7 VPS (Hetzner), where the engine runs continuously and emits OpenTelemetry spans on the hot path (`ws.message``orderbook.process``arbitrage.evaluate``sse.broadcast`). At that volume the app can approach or exceed Sentry's free-tier span quota (5M spans/month), while error monitoring stays well within limits. We want to keep tracing available for debugging but off by default so continuous operation is free-tier safe.
## What Changes
- Introduce an environment variable (`SENTRY_TRACING`, boolean, default `false`) that gates OpenTelemetry span creation and export to Sentry.
- When `SENTRY_TRACING` is disabled (default), the tracer is a no-op: no spans are created or exported, and no hot-path span allocation occurs. Error capture (`Sentry.captureException`, `unhandledRejection`, `uncaughtException`) remains fully active.
- When `SENTRY_TRACING` is enabled **and** `SENTRY_DSN` is set, spans are created and exported to Sentry as today, and `tracesSampleRate` is applied.
- Document the new variable in `.env.example` and `README.md`.
## Capabilities
### New Capabilities
- `observability`: error monitoring and optional distributed tracing behavior — how Sentry error capture is always on, and how OpenTelemetry span emission is conditioned on an environment flag.
### Modified Capabilities
<!-- None: no existing specs under openspec/specs/. -->
## Impact
- Code: `src/instrumentation/otel.ts` (gate span provider/export), `src/instrumentation/sentry.ts` (conditional `tracesSampleRate`), possibly `src/instrumentation/index.ts`.
- Config/docs: `.env.example`, `README.md` (observability section + env var table).
- Dependencies: none added or removed (OTel packages stay for the enabled path).
- Behavior: default runtime emits zero spans; error monitoring unchanged. No API or wire-format changes.