Tempo HTTP API on Grafana Labs

Tempo MCP server

Thu, 28 May 2026 17:50:33 +0100

Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server

Tempo includes an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that provides AI assistants and large language models (LLMs) with direct access to distributed tracing data through TraceQL queries and other endpoints.

For examples on how you can use the MCP server, refer to LLM-powered insights into your tracing data: introducing MCP support in Grafana Cloud Traces.

For more information on MCP, refer to the MCP documentation.

Configuration

You can enable the MCP server in your Tempo configuration via YAML:

query_frontend:
  mcp_server:
    enabled: true

Or via a command-line flag: --query-frontend.mcp-server.enabled=true.

Warning
Be aware that using this feature may cause tracing data to be passed to an LLM or LLM provider. Consider the content of your tracing data and organizational policies when enabling this feature.

The MCP server uses the same authentication and multi-tenancy behavior as other Tempo API endpoints.

Available tools

The MCP server exposes the following tools that AI assistants can use to interact with your tracing data:

Tool	Description
`traceql-search`	Search for traces using TraceQL queries
`traceql-metrics-instant`	Retrieve a single metric value given a TraceQL metrics query
`traceql-metrics-range`	Retrieve a metric series given a TraceQL metrics query
`get-trace`	Retrieve a specific trace by ID
`get-attribute-names`	Get available attribute names for use in TraceQL queries
`get-attribute-values`	Get values for a specific scoped attribute name
`docs-traceql`	Retrieve TraceQL documentation (basic, aggregates, structural, metrics)

Available resources

The MCP server also provides the following resources containing TraceQL documentation:

Resource URI	Description
`docs://traceql/basic`	Basic TraceQL syntax, intrinsics, operators, and attributes
`docs://traceql/aggregates`	TraceQL aggregate functions (count, sum, etc.)
`docs://traceql/structural`	Advanced structural query patterns
`docs://traceql/metrics`	Generating metrics from tracing data with TraceQL

Quick start

To experiment with the MCP server using dummy data and Claude Code:

Run the local docker-compose example in /example/docker-compose/single-binary. This exposes the MCP server at http://localhost:3200/api/mcp
Run claude mcp add --transport=http tempo http://localhost:3200/api/mcp to add a reference to Claude Code.
Run claude and ask some questions.

The Tempo MCP server uses the Streamable HTTP transport. Any MCP client that supports this transport can connect directly using the URL http://<tempo-host>:<port>/api/mcp. For example, in Cursor you can add the server with type: "streamableHttp" in your MCP configuration.

If your client doesn’t support Streamable HTTP natively, you can use the mcp-remote package as a bridge.

Push spans with HTTP

Thu, 28 May 2026 17:50:33 +0100

Push spans with HTTP

Sometimes using a tracing system is intimidating because it seems like you need complex application instrumentation or a span ingestion pipeline in order to push spans. This guide aims to show an extremely basic technique for pushing spans with HTTP/JSON from a Bash script using the OpenTelemetry receiver.

Before you begin

This procedure uses an example Docker Compose setup to run Tempo, so you don’t need an existing installation. The Docker image also includes a Grafana container which lets you visualize traces.

To use this procedure, you need to have Docker and docker compose installed.

Start Tempo using the quick start

Use the instructions in the Quick start for Tempo documentation to start a local instance of Tempo and Grafana.

Push spans with OTLP

Now that Tempo is running and listening on port 4318 for OTLP spans, you can push a span to Tempo using curl.

Before you can use this example, you need to update the start and end time.

The startTimeUnixNano and endTimeUnixNano fields are in nanoseconds, where 100000000 nanoseconds is 100 milliseconds. The nanosecond value can be obtained by any tool that provides the epoch date in nanoseconds. For example, under Linux, you can use date +%s%N. You can also use an online tool such as Epoch Converter to get the current time in nanoseconds.

Copy and paste the curl command into a text editor.

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' http://localhost:4318/v1/traces -d '
{
	"resourceSpans": [{
    	"resource": {
        	"attributes": [{
            	"key": "service.name",
            	"value": {
                	"stringValue": "my.service"
            	}
        	}]
    	},
    	"scopeSpans": [{
        	"scope": {
            	"name": "my.library",
            	"version": "1.0.0",
            	"attributes": [{
                	"key": "my.scope.attribute",
                	"value": {
                    	"stringValue": "some scope attribute"
                	}
            	}]
        	},
        	"spans": [
        	{
            	"traceId": "5B8EFFF798038103D269B633813FC700",
            	"spanId": "EEE19B7EC3C1B100",
            	"name": "I am a span!",
            	"startTimeUnixNano": 1689969302000000000,
            	"endTimeUnixNano": 1689970000000000000,
            	"kind": 2,
            	"attributes": [
            	{
                	"key": "my.span.attr",
                	"value": {
                    	"stringValue": "some value"
                	}
            	}]
        	}]
    	}]
	}]
}'

Replace startTimeUnixNano and endTimeUnixNano with current values for the last 24 hours to allow you to search for them using a 24 hour relative time range. You can get this in seconds and milliseconds from the Unix Epoch Clock. For startTimeUnixNano, use the current time minus 24 hours. Use the link above to figure out the value. For endTimeUnixNano, use the current time.

Multiply the milliseconds value by 1,000,000 to turn it into nanoseconds. You can do this from a bash terminal with the following command. Replace <epochTimeMilliseconds> with the milliseconds value.
Bash
```
echo $((<epochTimeMilliseconds> * 1000000))
```
Copy the updated curl command to a terminal window and run it.

View the trace in Grafana:
1. Open a browser window to http://localhost:3000.
2. Open the Explore page and select the Tempo data source.
3. Select the Search query type.
4. Select Run query to list available traces.
5. Select the trace ID (yellow box) to view details about the trace and its spans.

Retrieve traces

The easiest way to get the trace is to execute a simple curl command to Tempo. The returned format is OTLP.

Replace the trace ID in the curl command with the trace ID that was generated from the push. This information is in the data that’s sent with the curl. You could use Grafana’s Explorer page to find this, as shown in the previous section.

curl http://localhost:3200/api/v2/traces/5b8efff798038103d269b633813fc700

{"trace": {"resourceSpans":[{"resource":{"attributes":[{"key":"service.name","value":{"stringValue":"my.service"}}]},"scopeSpans":[{"scope":{"name":"my.library","version":"1.0.0"},"spans":[{"traceId":"W47/95gDgQPSabYzgT/HAA==","spanId":"7uGbfsPBsQA=","name":"I am a span!","kind":"SPAN_KIND_SERVER","startTimeUnixNano":"1689969302000000000","endTimeUnixNano":"1689970000000000000","attributes":[{"key":"my.span.attr","value":{"stringValue":"some value"}}],"status":{}}]}]}]}}

Copy and paste the updated curl command into a terminal window.

Use TraceQL to search for a trace

Alternatively, you can also use TraceQL to search for the trace that was pushed. You can search by using the unique trace attributes that were set:

curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/search --data-urlencode 'q={ .service.name = "my.service" }'

{"traces":[{"traceID":"5b8efff798038103d269b633813fc700","rootServiceName":"my.service","rootTraceName":"I am a span!","startTimeUnixNano":"1694718625557000000","durationMs":10000,"spanSet":{"spans":[{"spanID":"eee19b7ec3c1b100","startTimeUnixNano":"1694718625557000000","durationNanos":"10000000000","attributes":[{"key":"service.name","value":{"stringValue":"my.service"}}]}],"matched":1},"spanSets":[{"spans":[{"spanID":"eee19b7ec3c1b100","startTimeUnixNano":"1694718625557000000","durationNanos":"10000000000","attributes":[{"key":"service.name","value":{"stringValue":"my.service"}}]}],"matched":1}]}],"metrics":{"inspectedBytes":"292781","completedJobs":1,"totalJobs":1}}

To format this in a more human-readable output, consider using a tool such as jq, which lets you to run the same curl command and pipe it to jq to format the block. For example:

curl -G -s http://localhost:3200/api/search --data-urlencode 'q={ .service.name = "my.service" }' | jq

Spans from everything

Tracing isn’t limited to enterprise languages with complex frameworks. As you can see, it’s easy to store and track events from your js, python or bash scripts. You can use Tempo and distributed tracing today to trace CI pipelines, long running bash processes, python data processing flows, or anything else you can think of.

Happy tracing!