The OpenTelemetry Collector is a powerful Swiss Army knife for observability, but extending it with custom components presents unique challenges. This talk shares practical lessons from building and operating custom OTel Collector extensions in production at an observability startup.

You'll learn the progression from basic usage to advanced customization: starting with the OpenTelemetry Transformation Language (OTTL) for sophisticated data manipulation, then understanding when custom components become necessary. Through a production example—a custom connector transforming CloudWatch logs into distributed traces via AWS Firehose—you'll see the architecture, code, and design decisions behind bridging logs and traces pipelines.

Critically, we'll cover the practical realities of extending the collector: building your own distribution with the OpenTelemetry Collector Builder (ocb), managing dependencies, and the operational trade-offs. You'll leave with a decision framework for when to use OTTL versus custom code, and the confidence to extend the collector for your use cases.