The OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions define a common set of attribute names and meanings for telemetry, so traces, metrics, logs and events from different systems describe the same things the same way. The human-readable docs are largely generated from YAML definitions in the repository’s model folder. Released on a regular cadence; the latest is v1.44.0 (4 August 2026). Apache 2.0, under the OpenTelemetry project, a CNCF Graduated project.
OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions
OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions are the vocabulary of telemetry. The OpenTelemetry protocol and SDKs say how to carry spans, metrics and logs; the semantic conventions say what to call the things inside them — which attribute names describe an HTTP request, a database call, a messaging operation or a host — so that data from different services and vendors can be queried together.
- Model first - Conventions are defined in YAML in the repository’s
model/folder, and major parts of the Markdown documentation are generated from it. - Regular releases - v1.40.0 shipped in February 2026 and v1.44.0 on 4 August 2026; the README pins the OpenTelemetry specification version it tracks.
- Roadmap-driven - The README states that, given limited maintainer bandwidth, priority goes to initiatives on the OpenTelemetry roadmap, and other contributions may be delayed unless added through the project proposal process.
- Multi-vendor maintainers - Maintainers and approvers listed in the README come from Dash0, Dynatrace, Google, Microsoft, Elastic and Grafana Labs, among others.
- Split domains - Generative AI conventions have moved to their own repository, OpenTelemetry GenAI Semantic Conventions.
Where it sits. The conventions are the naming layer of OpenTelemetry, alongside Trace Context for propagation and OpenMetrics for metric exposition. For API producers they decide how calls to an HTTP or gRPC API show up in everyone’s dashboards.
