feat: introduce new service.criticality attribute (#2986) #3088

bachgarash · 2025-11-14T18:01:50Z

This PR introduces a new attribute - service.criticality

Relevant discussion has been made during Service and Deployment Semconv SIG meet

Meet notes https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Fy6yXfZqrwN_oHw95Bdfg_0hzUgzlk3VO5wA1invgkI/edit?tab=t.0

Recording can be found https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SYKfjYhZdm2Wh2Cl6KVQalKg_m4NhTPZqq-8SzEVO6s/edit?gid=0#gid=0 (6th of November)

Changes

This PR introduces a new semantic convention attribute service.criticality to enable classification of services based on their operational importance. This attribute will allow observability platforms to implement criticality-aware tracing, and sampling strategies.

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PRs that do not follow the guidance above, may be automatically rejected and closed.

Merge requirement checklist

CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines followed.
Change log entry added, according to the guidelines in When to add a changelog entry.
- If your PR does not need a change log, start the PR title with [chore]
Links to the prototypes or existing instrumentations (when adding or changing conventions)

bachgarash · 2025-11-14T18:03:44Z

Links to the prototypes or existing instrumentations (when adding or changing conventions)

I need help with guidance on how to provide prototype for a newly introduced semantic convention attribute. Please, feel free drop your idea. Thanks in advance!

model/service/entities.yaml

jsuereth · 2025-11-20T14:07:12Z

Note: The build is failing - My approval is for the proposed change, but please clean up the build and get all tests to pass. I believe this needs a make table-generation registry-generation pass at a minimum, and possibly other cleanups .

thompson-tomo · 2025-11-28T08:24:56Z

@bachgarash can you regenerate the docs to take on the changes to the documentation templates?

bachgarash · 2025-11-28T08:48:22Z

Hi there. I have added a basic prototype into Otel-demo as requested

open-telemetry/opentelemetry-demo#2770

linux-foundation-easycla · 2025-11-28T09:11:58Z

The committers listed above are authorized under a signed CLA.

✅ login: bachgarash / name: Bəxtiyar (08b5c96, 8a2324b, ea2fa7e)

jsuereth

Re-approving this with the demo.

thompson-tomo · 2025-12-05T23:48:33Z

Would service.instance.criticality be a better option given it is describing the criticality of the instance shown by being on the service.instance entity?

lmolkova · 2025-12-06T01:36:18Z

model/service/registry.yaml

+          This attribute enables classification of services based on their operational importance,
+          allowing observability platforms to implement criticality-aware tracing, monitoring,
+          and sampling strategies. By standardizing service criticality, organizations can implement
+          adaptive sampling rates (e.g., 100% for critical, 10% for low-priority services), optimize
+          telemetry costs by reducing data from non-critical services, improve incident response by
+          surfacing critical service traces first, and enable better capacity planning and resource allocation.


This is a great explanation and it definitely helps understand the reasoning behind the attribute. Perhaps it could be written in more actionable/non-prescriptive/spec-like manner?

E.g.

Suggested change

This attribute enables classification of services based on their operational importance,

allowing observability platforms to implement criticality-aware tracing, monitoring,

and sampling strategies. By standardizing service criticality, organizations can implement

adaptive sampling rates (e.g., 100% for critical, 10% for low-priority services), optimize

telemetry costs by reducing data from non-critical services, improve incident response by

surfacing critical service traces first, and enable better capacity planning and resource allocation.

note: >

Application developers are encouraged to set `service.criticality` to

express the operational importance of their services. Telemetry

consumers MAY use this attribute to optimize telemetry collection

or improve user experience.

lmolkova · 2025-12-06T01:37:10Z

docs/resource/README.md


 These are the attributes which MAY be configurable via a dedicated environment variable
-as specified in [OpenTelemetry Environment Variable Specification](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/blob/v1.51.0/specification/configuration/sdk-environment-variables.md):
+as specified in [OpenTelemetry Environment Variable Specification](https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-specification/blob/v1.50.0/specification/configuration/sdk-environment-variables.md):


could you please undo this and similar changes?

lmolkova · 2025-12-06T01:42:06Z

docs/resource/README.md

 ## Service

-Logical grouping of components.
+<!-- semconv entity.service -->


is this change intentional?

joaopgrassi · 2025-12-09T12:11:18Z

Would service.instance.criticality be a better option given it is describing the criticality of the instance shown by being on the service.instance entity?

@thompson-tomo No, see: https://github.com/open-telemetry/semantic-conventions/blob/main/docs/resource/service.md

The criticality is a characteristic of the logical service, thus, implicitly applied to all its instances.

thompson-tomo · 2025-12-09T12:23:09Z

@joaopgrassi that is what I had been thinking however the new attribute has been added to the service.instance entity as a descriptive attribute

semantic-conventions/docs/registry/entities/service.md

Line 36 in 08b5c96

    
           | Description | [`service.criticality`](/docs/registry/attributes/service.md) | ![Development](https://img.shields.io/badge/-development-blue) | `Recommended` | string | The operational criticality of the service. [3] | `critical`; `high`; `medium`; `low` |

rather than the being a descriptive attribute on the service entity. Hence the question.

joaopgrassi

Please revert/undo the unrelated changes to the actual intended changes. Also blocking to avoiding merging until we all agree under which entity namespace this attribute should go service.* or service.instance.*

joaopgrassi · 2025-12-09T12:12:38Z

internal/tools/scripts/schema-diff/yaml/weaver.yaml

@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 params:
-  next_version: "next_version_placeholder" # https://github.com/open-telemetry/weaver/issues/775
+  next_version: "next_version_placeholder"  # https://github.com/open-telemetry/weaver/issues/775


Revert unrelated changes, please.

joaopgrassi · 2025-12-09T12:13:22Z

areas.yaml


  - name: "Semantic Conventions: Resources and Entities"
    owner:
-      - name: "specs-semconv-maintainers" # TODO: Missing team user for entities?


Let's keep unrelated changes outside the PR. There's a few others as well.

joaopgrassi · 2025-12-09T12:23:47Z

model/service/entities.yaml

      - ref: service.instance.id
        role: identifying
        requirement_level: required
+      - ref: service.criticality


@jsuereth do we really want to add this under the service.instance.* namespace? Wouldn't it make more sense that this is part of service.* one? I feel this is a characteristic of the logical service, that applies to all its instances. I wouldn't think it makes sense that one instance is more critical than another.

bachgarash requested review from a team as code owners November 14, 2025 18:01

github-project-automation bot added this to Semantic Conventions Triage Nov 14, 2025

github-project-automation bot moved this to Untriaged in Semantic Conventions Triage Nov 14, 2025

github-actions bot added enhancement New feature or request area:service labels Nov 14, 2025

lmolkova moved this from Untriaged to Awaiting codeowners approval in Semantic Conventions Triage Nov 17, 2025

bachgarash requested a review from a team as a code owner November 17, 2025 20:28

jsuereth approved these changes Nov 20, 2025

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bachgarash requested a review from jsuereth November 20, 2025 16:10

bachgarash requested a review from a team as a code owner November 27, 2025 18:03

bachgarash force-pushed the feat/service-criticality-attribute branch from 9679b6a to 0de4ab4 Compare November 28, 2025 09:11

bachgarash requested review from a team as code owners November 28, 2025 09:11

bachgarash requested a review from a team November 28, 2025 09:11

bachgarash requested review from a team as code owners November 28, 2025 09:11

bachgarash force-pushed the feat/service-criticality-attribute branch from 0de4ab4 to bf07d66 Compare November 28, 2025 09:17

jsuereth approved these changes Dec 1, 2025

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lmolkova moved this from Awaiting codeowners approval to Needs More Approval in Semantic Conventions Triage Dec 1, 2025

bachgarash added 3 commits December 6, 2025 00:01

feat: introduce new service.criticality attribute (open-telemetry#2986)

8a2324b

feat: make yamllint happy

ea2fa7e

feat: add requirement level and rerun table generation

08b5c96

bachgarash force-pushed the feat/service-criticality-attribute branch from eeb4735 to 08b5c96 Compare December 5, 2025 22:12

lmolkova reviewed Dec 6, 2025

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joaopgrassi requested changes Dec 9, 2025

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github-project-automation bot moved this from Needs More Approval to Blocked in Semantic Conventions Triage Dec 9, 2025

feat: introduce new service.criticality attribute (#2986) #3088

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