Getting Started
Manual Setup
The Quickstart lets your coding agent do this work. This page is the same journey by hand. It is also the path for stacks the otel-instrumentation skill does not cover yet.
Prerequisites
Section titled “Prerequisites”- Node.js v22.13.0+ installed
Step 1: Start Kopai
Section titled “Step 1: Start Kopai”Run the local backend:
npx @kopai/app startpnpm dlx @kopai/app startyarn dlx @kopai/app startThis starts an OTLP collector on port 4318 and the dashboard with its API server on port 8000.
Step 2: Instrument Your Application
Section titled “Step 2: Instrument Your Application”Follow the OpenTelemetry guide for your language:
We also cover the Next.js, Mastra, and LangChain frameworks, plus infrastructure logs from journald and rsyslog.
Step 3: See Your Telemetry
Section titled “Step 3: See Your Telemetry”Run your app and send it a few requests. Then open the dashboard at http://localhost:8000 and inspect the Traces, Logs, and Metrics.
Step 4: Query With the CLI
Section titled “Step 4: Query With the CLI”The CLI reads from the local backend with no login and no flags:
npx @kopai/cli traces search --limit 5pnpm dlx @kopai/cli traces search --limit 5yarn dlx @kopai/cli traces search --limit 5Swap traces search for logs search or metrics discover to query the other signals.