OTelFlow for VS Code

Version-aware validation for OpenTelemetry Collector configurations, right in the editor — powered by the same registry and validation engine as otelflow.sluicio.com, compiled to WebAssembly and running entirely inside the extension host. Nothing leaves your machine.

What it does

Open a collector configuration (any YAML file with a top-level service: section plus component sections) and diagnostics appear in the editor and the Problems panel:

Unknown component types, with "did you mean" suggestions and rename hints (e.g. filestats → file_stats in v0.152.0).
Components that don't exist yet, were removed, or aren't in your distribution — per collector version, for core and contrib.
Undefined pipeline references, signal compatibility, connector role rules, auth extension references, required and typed config fields, deprecations.

The status bar shows which collector version and distribution the file is validated against; click it to change them.

The designer: run "OTelFlow: Open designer" (or click the graph icon in the editor title bar) to work on the configuration as a live flow diagram beside the editor — the same signal-colored canvas as otelflow.sluicio.com, with pipelines as lanes, connector edges routed across them, and invalid components flagged red. It follows the active editor and updates as you type, and it edits both ways:

"+" zones in each pipeline open the searchable component catalog (filtered to your collector version and distribution); picking a component generates a schema-driven form and writes the component plus its pipeline references into your YAML — comment-preserving, applied as a normal editor edit so undo works.
Click a node to inspect and edit its configuration in a form, or remove it — scoped to the pipeline you clicked in, with a prompt before a no-longer-used definition is deleted. The text editor scrolls along to the component you select.
Add pipeline opens the guided wizard.

MCP server for your editor's AI: the extension registers an OTelFlow Model Context Protocol server with VS Code (1.101+), so AI features that consume MCP — e.g. Copilot's agent mode — can search the component catalog, fetch config schemas, validate configurations they write, and produce share links. Same five tools as the standalone otelflow mcp command, same offline WASM engine, spawned locally with no network and no auth.

Settings

Setting	Description
`otelflow.collectorVersion`	Version to validate against (empty = newest supported).
`otelflow.distribution`	`contrib` (default) or `core`.

A per-file override wins over both — useful when one repository holds collectors on different versions:

# otelflow: version=0.152.0 distro=core

Roadmap

The extension now carries the full OTelFlow experience: offline diagnostics, the live canvas, and the click-to-configure designer writing YAML back into your editor.

Development

npm install
npm run build     # bundles the extension and compiles the Go validator to WASM
npm test          # smoke-tests the validator host in plain Node
npm run package   # produces the .vsix

Requires Go 1.24+ and Node 20+. Launch the extension with F5 from VS Code (the repository ships no launch config yet; "Run Extension" with --extensionDevelopmentPath=vscode works).

License

Apache-2.0, same as OTelFlow itself.

OTelFlow