Send your own OpenTelemetryto Beaam

Beaam accepts OTLP/HTTP metrics (ADR-0005). If you already emit OTel metrics, you point your exporter at Beaam — no re-instrumentation. This is the bring-your-own path; it takes about five minutes.

1. Create a stack, get an ingest key

A stack is one logical app + environment (e.g. “Acme — production”). It’s the scope telemetry is grouped under and the thing your ingest key authenticates.

Settings → Stacks → create one. The ingest key (bik_…) is shown once — save it. (Leaked or lost it? Rotate on the same screen; the old key dies immediately.)

2. Point your exporter at Beaam

Endpoint: https://app.beaam.app/api/otlp/metrics Auth: Authorization: Bearer <your ingest key>

OpenTelemetry Collector

exporters:
  otlphttp/beaam:
    endpoint: https://app.beaam.app/api/otlp
    headers:
      authorization: Bearer bik_your_key_here
service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      exporters: [otlphttp/beaam]

SDK (env vars)

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT=https://app.beaam.app/api/otlp/metrics
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_HEADERS="authorization=Bearer bik_your_key_here"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_PROTOCOL=http/json

Smoke test (curl)

curl -X POST https://app.beaam.app/api/otlp/metrics \
  -H "authorization: Bearer bik_your_key_here" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{"resourceMetrics":[{"resource":{"attributes":[
    {"key":"service.name","value":{"stringValue":"my-service"}}]},
    "scopeMetrics":[{"metrics":[{"name":"orders.processed",
    "gauge":{"dataPoints":[{"asInt":"1"}]}}]}]}]}'

A {"ok":true,...,"stored":1} response means it worked. The stack’s Connect panel flips to “First metric received” within a few seconds.

3. What Beaam does with it

• Metrics land immediately and are queryable (query-metrics, or the in-app views). service.name names each service; service.namespace is set to your stack automatically regardless of what you send.
• Liveness: once a stack has pushed, Beaam watches for it to keep pushing. If your collector goes silent past its expected cadence, Beaam alerts you — telemetry going dark is itself an incident (promise #2).

Limits & protection

• Max request body: 4 MB. Max datapoints per request: 50,000. Split larger batches.
• Per-stack hourly rate limits guard against a runaway exporter; normal batched export never approaches them. Over the limit returns 429 — reduce export frequency.
• Malformed payloads get a 400 (not silently dropped); valid OTLP carrying no datapoints is accepted as stored: 0.

Signals

Metrics are live today. Logs and traces are on the roadmap (the endpoints return 501 until then — never a silent drop).

---

Notes:

• OTLP/HTTP JSON only at /api/otlp/metrics. Protobuf is not decoded: the endpoint parses the body as JSON and answers 415 with Send OTLP/JSON (application/json) otherwise, so an exporter left on the SDK default of http/protobuf fails on its first export. Set the protocol explicitly, as above.
• Endpoint base for the Collector’s otlphttp exporter is https://app.beaam.app/api/otlp (it appends /metrics); the SDK metrics endpoint is the full .../api/otlp/metrics.

---

This page is generated from docs/quickstart-otel.md in the Beaam repository, so it stays in step with the implementation. Something unclear or wrong?Tell us — and see theAPI reference for the full list of operations.

Back to docs