Send OpenTelemetry from Laravel to your Mac

PHP instruments Laravel with an extension and a Composer package. No code changes.

Before you start

• Loggerhead is open.
• You know the effective port. Open Collectors → Loggerhead receiver → Connection and copy the HTTP port. The first workspace uses 4318. See Ports and the effective port.

Step 1: install the extension

Auto-instrumentation needs the opentelemetry PHP extension.

pecl install opentelemetry

Add extension=opentelemetry.so to your php.ini, then check it with php -m | grep opentelemetry.

Step 2: install the packages

composer require \
  open-telemetry/sdk \
  open-telemetry/exporter-otlp \
  open-telemetry/opentelemetry-auto-laravel

Step 3: set the endpoint

.env

OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED=true
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-laravel-app
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:4318
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf

OTEL_PHP_AUTOLOAD_ENABLED is the switch. Without it the packages load and do nothing.

Start the app with php artisan serve and open one route.

What arrives

Signal	State
Traces	Every request, with the route, the queries, and the queued jobs.
Metrics	Only what you record yourself.
Logs	Add OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER=otlp and the Monolog handler of the Laravel package.

Tag the environment

OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment.name=staging

See Workspaces and environments.

Then read it with your agent

1. Open Traces in Loggerhead and click a request to open its waterfall.
2. Connect your coding agent once, and it reads the same data. See Claude Code.