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.NET: Workflows: the span tag `message.type` collides with the obsoleted OpenTelemetry RPC attribute of the same name

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
csharp
Domain
observability

Research direction

The tag name is declared in dotnet/src/Microsoft.Agents.AI.Workflows/Observability/Tags.cs around line 20, and it is set on the executor.process span in WorkflowTelemetryContext.cs around line 146. Start there, then search the .NET tests for the literal message.type to find assertions that also need updating. Done means the tag uses a library-owned name such as executor.message.type, every reference and test uses it, and the new name is confirmed with a maintainer first.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

.NET triage
Summary

Microsoft.Agents.AI.Workflows sets the span tag message.type to the .NET type name of the message being processed. message.type is a registered OpenTelemetry semantic-convention attribute: the RPC message-event key with the enum values SENT / RECEIVED, deprecated as obsoleted in semantic-conventions 1.44.0 (model/rpc/deprecated/registry-deprecated.yaml). A registry-driven pipeline therefore treats the workflow tag as the obsoleted RPC key: Weaver live-check reports it as a deprecated attribute carrying a value outside its enum, and a collector that follows the registry drops it. The message type never reaches a backend.

Where (tag dotnet-1.24.0)
  • dotnet/src/Microsoft.Agents.AI.Workflows/Observability/Tags.cs:20 declares message.type.
  • dotnet/src/Microsoft.Agents.AI.Workflows/Observability/WorkflowTelemetryContext.cs:146 sets it on executor.process.
Why only this tag

The other workflow tags live in namespaces upstream does not define (workflow.*, executor.*, edge_group.*, message.content, message.source_id, message.target_id), so a downstream registry can declare them as library-owned keys and pass them through. message.type is the one tag that cannot be declared, because the catalog already carries the upstream key of that name with a different meaning. (session.id, error.type and error.message also collide, but their meaning matches upstream's, so they pass as the upstream keys.)

Ask

Give the tag a library-owned name, for example executor.message.type or workflow.message.type, the way the executor and edge-group tags already are. Longer term, prefixing all of message.* (workflow.message.*) would keep the library clear of the deprecated RPC message.* keys entirely.

Context

We maintain a Weaver registry that layers the GenAI conventions and library-owned keys for .NET instrumentation, and declare the workflow tags there as pass-through keys: https://github.com/ANcpLua/Qyl.OpenTelemetry.SemanticConventions/blob/main/registry/vendor/microsoft-agents-ai-workflows.yaml. Happy to send a PR for the rename if the direction is agreed.

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