Observability Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published May 22, 2026 4 min read

OTel Semantic Conventions: What to Use Where

OpenTelemetry has hundreds of semantic conventions. The ones that matter for SRE, with concrete examples.

HTTP attributes

http.method, http.status_code, http.route. Standard names mean cross-vendor and cross-tool compatibility.

Avoid custom names that mean the same thing. The convergence has value.

rpc.system (grpc, thrift), rpc.service, rpc.method. Standard means traces work in any backend.

Internal RPC layer should follow the standard even if you wrap it in custom abstractions.

k8s.pod.name, k8s.namespace.name, k8s.container.name. Standard means tools can correlate without custom config.

Most OTel SDKs auto-populate these. Verify; sometimes the auto-fills are off.