Investigation: SpiceDB OpenTelemetry Initialization Issue (#712)

Why I Investigated This

This investigation started from authzed/spicedb issue #712.

Users reported that tracing only initialized when ALL of the following were set simultaneously:

• SPICEDB_OTEL_PROVIDER=otlpgrpc
• SPICEDB_OTEL_ENDPOINT=localhost:4317
• OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317

Expected behavior:

Setting SPICEDB_OTEL_PROVIDER + SPICEDB_OTEL_ENDPOINT alone should have been sufficient.

Initial maintainer suspicion:

Potential propagation bug inside cobraotel.

Before attempting fixes, I wanted to understand exactly where tracing configuration entered the system and whether the issue originated from:

• OpenTelemetry SDK behavior
• Cobra/Viper environment propagation
• SpiceDB command wiring
• or cobraotel initialization semantics

Instead of patching immediately, I mapped the complete initialization chain first.

First Principles Analysis

Initial Mental Model