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what is appdash fr?

kelseyhightower/appdash — explained in plain English

Analysis updated 2026-07-17 · repo last pushed 2016-11-21

1GoAudience · developerComplexity · 3/5DormantSetup · moderate

tl;dr

Appdash traces how a single request travels through your application, showing a visual timeline to help you find slow steps and debug errors.

vibe map

mindmap
  root((appdash))
    What it does
      Traces requests end to end
      Visual timeline and tree
      Finds performance bottlenecks
    Tech stack
      Go
      Python client
      Ruby client
      OpenTracing API
    Use cases
      Debug slow web pages
      Trace requests across services
      Pinpoint slow database calls
    Audience
      Go developers
      Backend engineers

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what do people make with this?

VIBE 1

Trace why a web page is slow by viewing the request timeline

VIBE 2

Find which database call or external API causes a delay

VIBE 3

Track a request as it moves across multiple microservices

what's the stack?

GoPythonRubyOpenTracing

how it stacks up fr

kelseyhightower/appdashaegrail/aegrail-engineaeneasr/form
Stars111
LanguageGoGoGo
Last pushed2016-11-212019-03-08
MaintenanceDormantDormant
Setup difficultymoderatehardeasy
Complexity3/55/52/5
Audiencedeveloperops devopsdeveloper

Figures from each repo's GitHub metadata at analysis time.

how do i run it?

Difficulty · moderate time til it works · 1h+

Requires instrumenting code with tracking spans and running a central collector server.

in plain english

Appdash is a tool that helps you understand exactly what happens inside your application when it handles a request. If a user clicks a button and that action triggers a chain of events across different parts of your system, this tool traces the entire journey from start to finish. It shows you how long each step takes and displays the results as a visual timeline and tree, making it much easier to find performance bottlenecks or debug errors. To use it, developers add small tracking notes to their code at key points, like when a web server receives a request or when a database query runs. These notes are organized into a hierarchy. For example, when a main web request triggers sub-tasks, the system groups them together into a "span." The tool collects all these notes, sends them to a central server, and pieces them together into a complete picture of how a single request traveled through your entire application. This is designed for teams building applications in Go, though it also has client libraries for Python and Ruby. A typical user might be a developer trying to figure out why a web page takes too long to load. Instead of guessing which database call or external API is causing the delay, they can look at the generated timeline to pinpoint the exact slow step. It is especially useful for systems where a single user action touches multiple separate services before returning a result. The project is based on a famous Google research paper about large-scale tracing, meaning its design follows proven architectural patterns. It also supports the OpenTracing API, an industry standard that makes it easier to swap out or integrate with other monitoring tools. One notable detail is that it bundles its visual interface templates directly into its binary, so the web viewer runs without needing extra setup.

prompts (copy fr)

prompt 1
Show me how to add Appdash tracing spans to a Go web server.
prompt 2
Explain how Appdash's span hierarchy groups sub-tasks under a request.
prompt 3
Show me how to view the Appdash web UI to inspect a traced request.
prompt 4
Help me integrate Appdash with the OpenTracing API in my service.

Frequently asked questions

what is appdash fr?

Appdash traces how a single request travels through your application, showing a visual timeline to help you find slow steps and debug errors.

What language is appdash written in?

Mainly Go. The stack also includes Go, Python, Ruby.

Is appdash actively maintained?

Dormant — no commits in 2+ years (last push 2016-11-21).

How hard is appdash to set up?

Setup difficulty is rated moderate, with roughly 1h+ to a first successful run.

Who is appdash for?

Mainly developer.

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