Introduction
What Telflo is, the problem it solves, and who it's for.
Telflo is a visual editor for OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector configurations. Instead of hand-editing large YAML files, you build your telemetry pipelines on a canvas — dragging in receivers, processors, and exporters and connecting them — while Telflo generates valid Collector YAML for you in real time.
Telflo goes beyond authoring. You can test a configuration against real sample telemetry, version and publish it, and deploy it to a fleet of collectors that pull their config from Telflo automatically.
Why Telflo
OpenTelemetry Collector configs are powerful but verbose and easy to get wrong: a misplaced indent or an unconnected component can silently break a pipeline. Telflo helps by:
- Visualizing the pipeline so data flow is obvious at a glance.
- Validating continuously against the Collector's component schemas.
- Testing for real — pipe sample telemetry through your config and inspect the output before you ship.
- Assisting with AI that can plan, build, and explain configurations.
- Versioning your work so you can review, publish, and roll back changes.
- Managing a fleet — push a published configuration to many collectors and watch them converge.
Core concepts
OpenTelemetry Collector pipelines are built from four kinds of components:
| Component | Role | Connections |
|---|---|---|
| Receiver | Ingests telemetry (a source) | Outgoing only |
| Processor | Transforms telemetry in flight | Incoming and outgoing |
| Exporter | Sends telemetry to a destination | Incoming only |
| Extension | Standalone capabilities (e.g. health check) | No connections |
A pipeline connects receivers → processors → exporters for a given signal type (traces, metrics, or logs).
For the full vocabulary — configurations, versions, publishing, fleets, and instances — see Key concepts.
Who it's for
Platform and observability engineers who run the OpenTelemetry Collector and want a faster, safer way to author, test, and maintain its configuration across many collectors.
Next steps
Ready to try it? Head to the Quickstart.