Set up an OpenTelemetry collector for Managed ClickStack

This skill wires an OpenTelemetry collector into a Managed ClickStack service running on ClickHouse Cloud, sends rich synthetic telemetry through it, and confirms the data is actually visible in ClickStack. It uses clickhousectl for all cloud and SQL operations.

Scope. This skill supports two paths, chosen in Step 0:

1. Deploy a new collector locally. You can do this two ways: individual docker commands, or a docker compose file (recommended, fewer commands and one file to start/stop). Make the user aware of both up front and let them pick in Step 0; do not assume plain docker. Either way runs the ClickStack distribution of the collector, preconfigured for Managed ClickStack.
2. Configure your own existing collector by adding the ClickHouse exporter configuration. We give you the exact config to drop in; you reload your collector. Use this if you already run a collector in a gateway role.

A full Kubernetes deployment (Helm, secrets in K8s Secrets) is out of scope here; the config we generate in path 2 can be applied to a collector running anywhere.

The end state is:

• A dedicated hyperdx_ingest SQL user on the target service, with exactly the grants the collector needs (it creates the otel.* schema on first write).
• A collector forwarding logs, traces, and metrics into the otel database on the service, either the new local ClickStack collector or your existing one.
• Rich synthetic telemetry across several services, severities, span statuses, and metric types, so ClickStack's Search, Service Map, and dashboards have something real to show.
• The service confirmed awake, and the user walked through the ClickStack onboarding in the Cloud console so they can actually see their data.

Secrets (the OTLP auth token and the SQL password) are generated locally, written once to a 0600 env file, and passed to Docker via --env-file. They are never pasted into the chat, never passed with docker run -e, and never echoed back after creation.

Follow these steps in order. Each step depends on state established by the previous one.

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Step 0: Choose your path

Ask the user two short questions before doing anything else, because they determine which later steps run.

Question 1: Do you already have an OpenTelemetry collector running in a gateway role?

• No, set one up for me. -> the new-collector path. Continue to Question 2.
• Yes, I have one. -> the existing-collector path. Skip Question 2 (it does not apply), and in Step 6 you will configure their collector rather than deploy a new one.

Question 2 (new-collector path only): Run the collector with individual Docker commands, or a Docker Compose file?

• Docker Compose (recommended). Fewer commands, one file to start and stop, easiest to re-run. Best if docker compose is available.
• Individual Docker commands. Use if Compose is not installed or you prefer explicit commands.

Record the answers as COLLECTOR_PATH (new or existing) and, for the new path, DEPLOY_MODE (compose or run). Refer back to them in Step 6 and Step 7.

---

Step 1: Batch the permissions up front

Coding agents prompt for approval the first time they see each shell command. To avoid interrupting the user every few steps, ask them once, up front, to allowlist the command prefixes below (the "always allow for this project / session" option in their agent). There are no destructive operations and nothing targets anything outside this project or their ClickHouse Cloud service.

Command prefix	Used for	Needed when
openssl rand …	generate the OTLP token and SQL password	always
clickhousectl cloud …	auth, resolve the service, run SQL via the Query API	always
jq …	parse JSON from clickhousectl	always
docker … / docker compose …	run/inspect the collector and the telemetry generator	new-collector path, and the optional telemetry check
curl …	local health check against localhost:13133 (and installing clickhousectl if missing)	new-collector path

Tell the user, in your own words: "If your agent supports it, choose 'always allow' for each of these the first time it asks. The whole run is read-only against your machine except for the collector container, and write operations against ClickHouse are limited to creating the ingest user and the otel schema."

If the user is on the existing-collector path and does not want to run the optional telemetry check, you can drop docker and curl from the list.

Two approvals are semantic, not prefix-based, so allowlisting won't pre-clear them. Warn the user to expect these and approve them explicitly when they appear:

• The clickhousectl install in Step 3 uses curl … | sh, which many agent sandboxes flag as "downloading and running untrusted code" regardless of any curl allowlist rule.
• The CREATE USER / GRANT in Step 5 may be flagged as "modifying shared production infrastructure," again independent of the clickhousectl prefix rule.

Neither is solved by the table above; they are one-time, intentional, and safe to approve.

Then continue.

---

Step 2: Confirm the target service and lay down the secrets file

The user's prompt contains a service identifier, either a service ID (UUID) or a service name. Treat that value as SERVICE_REF.

Create a working directory and a 0600 env file that will hold all configuration and secrets for this run. The key names match exactly what the collector image reads, so this same file is passed straight to docker run --env-file (or referenced by Compose) in Step 6. Write it under a tight umask so the secret is never briefly world-readable:

WORKDIR="${WORKDIR:-$HOME/clickstack-otel-collector}"
mkdir -p "$WORKDIR" && chmod 700 "$WORKDIR"
ENV_FILE="$WORKDIR/collector.env"

# Generate secrets WITHOUT printing them; write straight into a private file.
( umask 177
  {
    echo "SERVICE_REF=$SERVICE_REF"
    echo "OTLP_AUTH_TOKEN=$(openssl rand -hex 32)"
    echo "CLICKHOUSE_USER=hyperdx_ingest"
    echo "CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -hex 24)Aa1-"
    echo "HYPERDX_OTEL_EXPORTER_CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE=otel"
  } > "$ENV_FILE"
)
chmod 600 "$ENV_FILE"
ls -l "$ENV_FILE"

Two things about these values matter and are easy to get wrong:

• Key names are exact. The collector reads CLICKHOUSE_USER, CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD, CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT, and HYPERDX_OTEL_EXPORTER_CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE. Store the SQL password under CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD (not a custom name); if it is missing, the collector starts with an empty password and dies with code: 516, Authentication failed.
• The password charset is constrained from three directions at once. ClickHouse Cloud rejects passwords without at least one uppercase character and one special character, so a plain hex string fails at CREATE USER. At the same time, the collector's migration tool embeds the password in a connection URL, so @, :, /, ?, #, and % corrupt it (symptom: code: 516 at startup even though the password is "correct"). The recipe above is random hex (lowercase + digits) plus the suffix Aa1-, which adds the required uppercase, a digit, and a URL-unreserved special character (-). The OTLP token has no such rules (it is just a bearer token), so plain hex is fine for it.

The env file uses bare KEY=VALUE lines with no quotes: Docker's --env-file does not do shell parsing, so any quotes you add become part of the value.

On the existing-collector path the OTLP_AUTH_TOKEN is not used by your collector (auth on your receiver is your own setup); it is generated only so the same file works if you later switch to the local collector. The CLICKHOUSE_* values are still used: they go into the exporter config you add to your collector in Step 6.

Every later step runs in a fresh shell, so WORKDIR, ENV_FILE, and any exported credentials do not persist, and WORKDIR/ENV_FILE are not stored inside the env file, so sourcing it can't recover them. Begin each subsequent step's shell with this standard preamble, which re-derives the paths from the deterministic default, loads the saved credentials (Step 3), and loads the config:

WORKDIR="${WORKDIR:-$HOME/clickstack-otel-collector}"; ENV_FILE="$WORKDIR/collector.env"
[ -f "$WORKDIR/creds.env" ] && . "$WORKDIR/creds.env"; set -a; . "$ENV_FILE"; set +a

If you chose a non-default WORKDIR, set it explicitly at the top of every step (the ${WORKDIR:-…} default only covers the standard location). Later steps refer to this as "the standard preamble".

Confirm with the user that SERVICE_REF is correct. Tell them the working directory and that collector.env (mode 0600) now holds the OTLP token and the SQL password. Do not print either secret. If they want to see a value, point them at the file (grep OTLP_AUTH_TOKEN "$ENV_FILE").

If the user supplied their own token or password, write those into the file instead of the generated ones, but keep the same 0600 discipline and make sure any custom password still meets the charset rules above.

---

Step 3: Authenticate clickhousectl (separate terminal by default)

Check clickhousectl is on PATH. Run this presence check on its own, not chained to the installer: the || curl … | sh form drags a harmless check into a compound command that sandboxes deny wholesale as an untrusted-code download.

which clickhousectl

Only if that prints nothing, install it (the user may need to approve this explicitly, see Step 1):

curl -fsSL https://clickhouse.com/cli | sh

Check authentication:

clickhousectl cloud auth status

This skill needs API key authentication: OAuth is read-only and cannot create users or run write queries. If the API key row is not Active, the user must authenticate.

Do not ask the user to paste their API key and secret into the chat. Anything pasted into the conversation lives in the transcript and has to be rotated afterward. Instead, ask them to authenticate in a separate terminal, then tell you when they are done:

I need a ClickHouse Cloud Admin API key to create the ingest user and verify the data. Please don't paste it here. Instead:

1. In the Cloud console, open Organization → API keys → New API key, and give it the Admin role. (Developer-scoped keys can't provision the per-service Query API endpoint that cloud service query uses.)

2. In a separate terminal, run:

   clickhousectl cloud auth login --api-key <key-id> --api-secret <key-secret>
   

3. Tell me when that's done and I'll re-check the auth status.

Poll until the API key row reports Active, then confirm with a real privileged call rather than trusting the status table alone. Use a ref-agnostic call here: SERVICE_REF may be a name, and cloud service get only accepts a UUID, so confirming with get would fail on a name for reasons unrelated to auth. cloud service list needs no ref and proves the API key works:

clickhousectl cloud auth status
clickhousectl cloud service list --json | jq -r '.[].name'

If the list returns your services, you are authenticated; continue. The actual name-or-UUID resolution of SERVICE_REF happens in Step 4.

Expect to need the env-var credentials (common, not an edge case). Many clickhousectl builds save the credentials file but a freshly spawned shell (such as the one your tool calls run in) doesn't read it, so auth status shows Active yet the very next clickhousectl call reports No credentials found. Rather than treat this as a rare fallback, write a small sourceable creds file once, then load it in every later shell. This keeps each subsequent shell to a single . line instead of two jq re-derivations, and keeps the secret out of the chat:

# Write a private, sourceable creds file next to collector.env.
( umask 177
  { echo "export CLICKHOUSE_CLOUD_API_KEY=$(jq -r .api_key    "$HOME/.clickhouse/credentials.json")"
    echo "export CLICKHOUSE_CLOUD_API_SECRET=$(jq -r .api_secret "$HOME/.clickhouse/credentials.json")"
  } > "$WORKDIR/creds.env"
)
chmod 600 "$WORKDIR/creds.env"

From now on, open every shell that calls clickhousectl with both loads, because env vars do not persist across shells:

. "$WORKDIR/creds.env"; set -a; . "$ENV_FILE"; set +a

Re-run the service list check above with the creds loaded; it should now succeed. Do not continue until a real call works. (If clickhousectl auth status already shows API key … Active and calls succeed without creds.env, you can skip this; but most agent shells need it.)

---

Step 4: Resolve the service and capture the HTTPS endpoint

Run the standard preamble (Step 2) so the paths, credentials, and config are all loaded in this shell, then resolve the service. If SERVICE_REF is a UUID, use it directly; otherwise look it up by name:

WORKDIR="${WORKDIR:-$HOME/clickstack-otel-collector}"; ENV_FILE="$WORKDIR/collector.env"
[ -f "$WORKDIR/creds.env" ] && . "$WORKDIR/creds.env"; set -a; . "$ENV_FILE"; set +a

# UUID form
clickhousectl cloud service get "$SERVICE_REF" --json > "$WORKDIR/svc.json"

# Name form (note the double quotes: service names can contain spaces or apostrophes,
# e.g. "Alex's test")
clickhousectl cloud service list --json \
  | jq --arg n "$SERVICE_REF" '.[] | select(.name==$n)' > "$WORKDIR/svc.json"

Extract the values you need, coercing the port to an integer. The port serializes as a float (8443.0); if :8443.0 leaks into the endpoint the collector's ClickHouse exporter cannot dial it:

SERVICE_ID=$(jq -r '.id' "$WORKDIR/svc.json")
SERVICE_NAME=$(jq -r '.name' "$WORKDIR/svc.json")
STATE=$(jq -r '.state' "$WORKDIR/svc.json")
CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT=$(jq -r '.endpoints[] | select(.protocol=="https")
  | "https://\(.host):\(.port | tonumber | floor)"' "$WORKDIR/svc.json")

# Persist the resolved values back into the env file for later steps and docker --env-file.
# Append only if the key is not already present, so a second run does not duplicate lines.
grep -q '^SERVICE_ID=' "$ENV_FILE" || echo "SERVICE_ID=$SERVICE_ID" >> "$ENV_FILE"
grep -q '^CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT=' "$ENV_FILE" || echo "CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT=$CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT" >> "$ENV_FILE"
printf 'service=%q state=%s endpoint=%s\n' "$SERVICE_NAME" "$STATE" "$CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT"

STATE must be running. If it is stopped or starting, ask the user to start the service (or wait), and do not proceed. ClickHouse Cloud services idle-suspend, so even a "running" service can be asleep; the next query both checks reachability and wakes it:

clickhousectl cloud service query --id "$SERVICE_ID" --query "SELECT version()"

A successful response confirms the service is awake and that the per-service Query API key is provisioned. On the first call clickhousectl prints Provisioning Query API endpoint + key for service '<name>'..., which is expected.

---

Step 5: Create the hyperdx_ingest SQL user and grant it otel.*

This step is the same on both paths: the collector (new or existing) authenticates to ClickHouse as hyperdx_ingest. Open the shell with the combined load so $CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD (and credentials) are set.

Expect an approval prompt here. The CREATE USER / GRANT statements below are DDL against a Cloud service, so some agent sandboxes flag them as "modifying shared production infrastructure" even when clickhousectl is allowlisted. This is expected; the operations are scoped to a single dedicated ingest user and the otel schema, and the user should approve them explicitly when prompted.

Never put the plaintext password in the SQL. Hash it locally and use sha256_hash. Two problems rule out IDENTIFIED WITH sha256_password BY '$CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD': the secret would land in the process arg list (visible in ps) and shell history, and, critically, the Query API echoes the failing statement verbatim in its error JSON, so any error (a transient failure, a charset slip) leaks the password into output an agent may surface. Passing it over stdin does not help, the error echo still contains it. Instead compute the SHA-256 hash of the password locally (sha256_hash stores exactly what sha256_password would, so the collector still logs in with the plaintext from the env file) and put only the hash in the statement. A hash is non-reversible, so even an echoed error cannot leak the password:

WORKDIR="${WORKDIR:-$HOME/clickstack-otel-collector}"; ENV_FILE="$WORKDIR/collector.env"
[ -f "$WORKDIR/creds.env" ] && . "$WORKDIR/creds.env"; set -a; . "$ENV_FILE"; set +a

# SHA-256 of the password. openssl is already a dependency; this is portable (macOS + Linux).
# Only this hash ever reaches SQL, output, or `ps`; the plaintext stays in the env file.
PW_HASH=$(printf %s "$CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD" | openssl dgst -sha256 | awk '{print $NF}')

# Send statements ONE AT A TIME: the Query API runs over HTTP and rejects multi-statement input
# ("Multi-statements are not allowed"), so a single ; -separated batch fails.
clickhousectl cloud service query --id "$SERVICE_ID" --query \
  "CREATE USER IF NOT EXISTS hyperdx_ingest IDENTIFIED WITH sha256_hash BY '$PW_HASH'"
# Re-run safe: force the password to this run's value if the user already existed.
clickhousectl cloud service query --id "$SERVICE_ID" --query \
  "ALTER USER hyperdx_ingest IDENTIFIED WITH sha256_hash BY '$PW_HASH'"

Grant the least privilege the collector needs to create and write the otel.* schema. On the current image the schema migrations and their version table also live in otel, so otel.* is sufficient (this statement carries no secret):

clickhousectl cloud service query --id "$SERVICE_ID" --query \
  "GRANT SELECT, INSERT, CREATE DATABASE, CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW ON otel.* TO hyperdx_ingest"

Older image builds: some earlier collector versions ran their goose migrations against a version table in the default database, so startup looped on ACCESS_DENIED until default.* was also granted. If you see ACCESS_DENIED referencing default in the collector logs (Step 6), add this and restart the container:

clickhousectl cloud service query --id "$SERVICE_ID" --query \
  "GRANT SELECT, INSERT, CREATE TABLE ON default.* TO hyperdx_ingest"

Verify:

clickhousectl cloud service query --id "$SERVICE_ID" --query "SHOW GRANTS FOR hyperdx_ingest"

You should see GRANT SELECT, INSERT, CREATE DATABASE, CREATE TABLE, CREATE VIEW ON otel.* TO hyperdx_ingest.

---

Step 6: Set up the collector

Follow the sub-section that matches the path and mode you chose in Step 0. All three converge on the same end state: a collector accepting OTLP and writing into the otel database on the service. Every code block in this step assumes you have run the standard preamble (Step 2) first, so $WORKDIR, $ENV_FILE, $SERVICE_ID, and the secrets are set in the shell.

Make sure Docker is running (new-collector path only):

WORKDIR="${WORKDIR:-$HOME/clickstack-otel-collector}"; ENV_FILE="$WORKDIR/collector.env"
[ -f "$WORKDIR/creds.env" ] && . "$WORKDIR/creds.env"; set -a; . "$ENV_FILE"; set +a
docker info > /dev/null

Step 6a: New collector with Docker Compose (DEPLOY_MODE=compose)

Write a Compose file in the working directory. It reads the same collector.env for secrets, publishes the OTLP and health ports, and pins a named network so the telemetry generator in Step 7 can reach the collector by container name:

cat > "$WORKDIR/docker-compose.yaml" <<'EOF'
name: clickstack
services:
  otel-collector:
    image: clickhouse/clickstack-otel-collector:latest
    container_name: clickstack-otel-collector
    env_file: ./collector.env
    ports:
      - "4317:4317"   # OTLP gRPC
      - "4318:4318"   # OTLP HTTP
      - "13133:13133" # health
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks: [clickstack-net]
networks:
  clickstack-net:
    name: clickstack-net
EOF

# Compose refuses to adopt a clickstack-net it did not create (a leftover from the docker run
# path, a prior failed Compose run, or a DEPLOY_MODE switch), failing with "network clickstack-net
# was found but has incorrect label". If an orphan exists with no containers attached, remove it so
# Compose can recreate it with its own labels.
if docker network inspect clickstack-net >/dev/null 2>&1 \
   && [ -z "$(docker network inspect clickstack-net -f '{{range .Containers}}{{.Name}} {{end}}')" ]; then
  docker network rm clickstack-net
fi

( cd "$WORKDIR" && docker compose up -d )

Compose creates the clickstack-net network for you (the guard above clears an orphaned one from a prior run first). Skip to Step 6d to confirm health.

Step 6b: New collector with individual Docker commands (DEPLOY_MODE=run)

Create a user-defined network so the telemetry generator in Step 7 can reach the collector by container name:

docker network create clickstack-net 2>/dev/null || true

Start the collector, passing all secrets via --env-file (never -e, which would put the secret on the command line, in shell history, and in ps). The docker rm -f first makes the step safe to re-run:

docker rm -f clickstack-otel-collector 2>/dev/null || true
docker run -d \
  --name clickstack-otel-collector \
  --network clickstack-net \
  --env-file "$ENV_FILE" \
  -p 4317:4317 \
  -p 4318:4318 \
  -p 13133:13133 \
  clickhouse/clickstack-otel-collector:latest

The image reads OTLP_AUTH_TOKEN, CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT, CLICKHOUSE_USER, CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD, and HYPERDX_OTEL_EXPORTER_CLICKHOUSE_DATABASE from the env file. It enables bearer-token auth on the OTLP receiver with an empty scheme, so callers send the raw token as the authorization header (no Bearer prefix). Continue to Step 6d.

Step 6c: Configure your existing collector (COLLECTOR_PATH=existing)

Add the ClickHouse exporter to your existing collector configuration. The config below matches the behavior of the ClickStack distribution, including the Session Replay (rrweb) routing path, and writes into the otel database the ClickStack UI expects.

Reference the endpoint and password as environment variables (${env:…}), do not hardcode them into the config file. The contrib collector expands ${env:VAR} at load time, so keeping the plaintext password out of the config file is both safer and consistent with the rest of this skill. Start your collector with the env vars available, the simplest way is the same --env-file the local collector uses:

# When running the contrib collector in Docker, pass collector.env so ${env:CLICKHOUSE_*} resolve:
#   docker run -d --env-file "$ENV_FILE" -p 4317:4317 -p 4318:4318 \
#     -v "$WORKDIR/your-config.yaml:/etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml:ro" \
#     otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:latest
# For a non-Docker collector, export CLICKHOUSE_ENDPOINT and CLICKHOUSE_PASSWORD into its
# environment (e.g. an EnvironmentFile= in the systemd unit) before it starts.

Add this to your collector config and reload it:

receivers:
  otlp/hyperdx:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        include_metadata: true
        endpoint: "0.0.0.0:4317"
      http:
        cors:
          allowed_origins: ["*"]
          allowed_headers: ["*"]
        include_metadata: true
        endpoint: "0.0.0.0:4318"

processors:
  batch:
  memory_limiter:
    limit_mib: 1500
    spike_limit_mib: 512
    check_interval: 5s