Telemetry policies are now an OpenTelemetry proposal.OTEP-4738 ->
Tero
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From the creators of Vector.dev

Stop being the telemetry cleanup crew.

Tero finds waste, risk, and noise across your telemetry estate, turns fixes into reviewable policies, and helps the right teams own and deploy those policies through the tools they already use.

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app.usetero.com/issues
ISS-1247hot-pathCostHigh

Diagnostic logger left on in the request hot path

api-gateway/Platform/opened 11 min ago

A per-request trace from the router middleware is logging on every call to /v2/*. It ships at DEBUG, but the collector is keeping it, and nothing downstream reads it.

Projected cost+$25,032/ yr
Records45M/ day
Data volume11 GB/ day
Resolvegenerated policy / ready to deploy
DropDrop at the sourcedrop-api-gateway-middleware-trace
id: drop-api-gateway-middleware-tracename: Drop api-gateway middleware tracelog:  match:    - resource_attribute: ["service.name"]      exact: api-gateway    - log_field: LOG_FIELD_BODY      contains: "requestContext entered"  keep: none

Atomic, reviewable, reversible. Stops the bleed now; fix the code on your own schedule.

Log eventrouter_middleware_traceView in Datadog
Volume45M/day / 11 GB
Resource
service.nameapi-gateway
service.namespaceedge
deployment.environmentprod
Log attributes
event.namerouter_middleware_trace
http.route/v2/checkout
http.request.methodPOST
request.idr_88a1c
Event discoveredFirst seen in the telemetry catalog16 min ago
Hot path check firedA scheduled check flagged this event as an anomaly13 min ago
AI investigationTero verified the anomaly, not a false positive12 min ago
Issue openedPromoted to an issue · policy generated11 min ago
Policy deployedDeploy the generated policy to the estatepending
Resolution verifiedTero confirms the checks clearpending
DropDrop at the sourcedrop-api-gateway-middleware-trace
Problem

Your telemetry scaled.
Your controls still run through you.

More AI agents
More code
More features
More deploys
More services
More telemetry
Manual controls
cost dashboardssampling rulesexclusion filterspipelinestiered storage
A 10x bill spike
Your day, derailed
Renewal shock
Chasing engineers
The cost police
Secrets in logs

Exclusion filters sit behind admin settings.

Pipeline configs sit behind gatekeepers and deploys.

Tickets ask busy teams to clean up work they cannot see.

The platform team becomes the bottleneck.

Policy Control

Telemetry policies
break the bottleneck.

A telemetry policy is a small, reviewable control: what it matches, what it changes, where it runs, who owns it, and whether it is working.

Your teams review, own, deploy, and improve each fix as its own policy. No central pile of rules to maintain.

Six properties · no exceptions
01
Atomicone matcher, one action
02
Reviewablesmall enough to read in one sitting
03
Ownabletied to services, teams, events
04
Portableruns in any conforming runtime
05
Measurablehits, drift, downstream impact
06
Composablemost-restrictive precedence, parallel evaluation

Built on an open standard, donated to OpenTelemetry as OTEP-4738 ->

Discovery

Tero models your telemetry estate and finds the policies your teams need.

Tero connects to the places your telemetry lives, builds a service-level model of events, volumes, owners, destinations, and risk, then runs standing checks for waste, noise, sensitive data, and policy opportunities.

app.usetero.com /cost
Annualized spend$990Kacross 13 services
Potential savings$402K40.6% of current spend
Policy candidates13found across the estate
Tero identified 1 high-priority cost issuesReview issues →
Annualized spend · actual & projectedvaluable spendwaste Tero can cutwithout policies
$0$550K$1.10Mnow · policies deployDec'26FebAprJunAugOctDec
13 services · 13 policy candidatessorted by potential savings
ServiceCandidatesVolumePotential ▼Spend / yr
kafka195 TB/mo$126K$350K
api-gateway1138 TB/mo$62K$140K
product-reviews120 TB/mo$43K$74K
product-catalog122 TB/mo$42K$81K
load-generator118 TB/mo$41K$66K
auth-svc216 TB/mo$20K$59K
search-svc111 TB/mo$16K$41K
13 services mapped · nothing sampledpotential $402K / yr · 40.6%
Runtime

Run policies without changing your telemetry stack.

Clean signal
host · ip-10-0-12-44 · us-east-1
OTel Collector
Tero policy engineGo
policy sync·hits·drops·impact
Integration guide

Policies sync to the runtime

Approved policies sync to the runtime. Each runtime reports back hits, drops, and impact. You skip the config rollout, the redeploy, and the ticket.

Policy spec ->

10,000 policies, one pass

The router compiles every policy into a single matching pass, built on Hyperscan, so p99 holds constant from 10 policies to 10,000.

Benchmarks ->Deep dive ->
Workflow

One workflow gets you out of the middle.

Your teams

each owns and approves its own policies
@platform8 services
@checkout4 services
@payments3 services
@commerce6 services
@data-platform5 services
+6 moresame review path

Tero control plane

live

Your infrastructure

Your services

api-gatewayx8
checkoutx4
paymentx3

+ 14 more services

Data plane

OTel Collectorcollector
Vectordrop-in
Tero Edgezig · 6mb

+ any conformant runtime

Destinations

Datadogcandidate found
Splunk
CloudWatch

+ any OpenTelemetry sink

Resolution

Block the problem now. Route the fix to the right place.

Some issues should be fixed in code. Some should stay as policies. Tero gives you immediate control, then routes the follow-up into the tools and agents your teams already use.

ISS-1247HOT PATH · COSThigh

Debug logging exploded in the checkout hot path

A debug log in the request path is shipping on every checkout call.

Projected cost
+$25K/yr
Records
45M/day
Owner
@platform
ResponseBlock now, fix later
  1. Rate-limit policy
  2. Alert team
  3. Open Jira
  4. Hand to Claude Code
Outcome

Telemetry that works for platform, teams, and finance.

Platform stops cleaning up. Teams own their telemetry and act faster when something breaks. Across the estate, the data gets cheaper and safer.

For your leadershipEng leadership & finance

~40% less telemetry spend, on average

No more renewal sticker shock

A budget you can forecast

Stop paying to store data no one queries

Spending discipline that holds quarter over quarter

For youPlatform & SRE

Stop being the cost police

No more 2am fire drills from a runaway log

Stop chasing engineers to clean up after themselves

One place to see every policy: where it runs, what it saves

Stop being everyone's telemetry cleanup crew

For your engineersThe teams that emit it

Never be the one who blew up the bill

An honest mistake stops being an incident

No memorizing what's safe to log

Debug faster. Signal isn't buried in junk

No telemetry chores derailing your sprint

Built by the team behind Vector.dev · OpenTelemetry maintainers · telemetry policies are now an OpenTelemetry proposal