About the Project

GhostTrace is a full-stack observability platform built as a monorepo (pnpm workspaces) with NestJS for the ingestion & API layer, Next.js 14 App Router for the dashboard, and PostgreSQL for persistence. It implements the standard OpenTelemetry OTLP/HTTP protocol so any Node.js or NestJS service can pipe traces in with zero vendor lock-in. Key engineering highlights include: a SHA-256 hashed API key system with one-time reveal and instant revocation, an automatic PII/secrets redaction pipeline (bearer tokens, passwords, cookies, card numbers), idempotent span deduplication, real-time Live Tail via Server-Sent Events, and a differential trace comparison engine that side-by-sides a baseline (success) trace against a failing trace to instantly surface missing operations and execution divergence. The project also ships custom OpenTelemetry SDK packages (@ghosttrace/sdk-node, @ghosttrace/instrumentation-nest, @ghosttrace/instrumentation-prisma) and a fully instrumented demo e-commerce API to generate reproducible telemetry.

Key Features

• Standard OTLP/HTTP Ingestion: Implements POST /v1/traces supporting both JSON and Protobuf formats — compatible with any OpenTelemetry-instrumented service.
• Evidence-First Trace Waterfall: Parent-child span hierarchy with microsecond offsets, status flags, color-coded latency bars, and a Span Detail drawer showing formatted SQL / Prisma calls.
• Root Cause & Exception Forensics: Captures error types, messages, and full formatted stack traces per span with a dedicated Exceptions page.
• Stack-Hash Error Grouping: Aggregates recurring exceptions by cryptographic signature hash to eliminate noise and surface true error patterns.
• Differential Trace Analysis: Side-by-side comparison of baseline vs target traces to detect missing spans and execution divergence.
• Slow Query Analyzer: Surfaces Prisma ORM database operations exceeding configurable thresholds (25ms / 50ms / 100ms / 250ms) with formatted SQL and direct trace navigation.
• Live Tail via SSE: Real-time streaming feed of incoming traces and exceptions with pause/resume, auto-scroll, and error-only filter.
• Zero-Trust Security: SHA-256 hashed API keys (one-time reveal), automatic PII redaction (tokens, passwords, cookies, card numbers) before persistence.
• Custom OTel SDK Packages: Ships @ghosttrace/sdk-node, @ghosttrace/instrumentation-nest, and @ghosttrace/instrumentation-prisma as reusable workspace packages.
• Dockerized Monorepo: Full docker-compose setup (API, Web, Demo API, PostgreSQL) with Nginx reverse proxy config for production VPS deployment.

Technologies Used

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