Using Parseable with Datasette for OpenTelemetry traces
Simon Willison’s Weblog Simon Willison
Parseable can now show Datasette OpenTelemetry traces. A new observability tool, an AGPL binary, and a local demo all in one.
Based on reporting by Simon Willison’s Weblog, Simon Willison — read the original for the full story.
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Simon Willison spotted Parseable in a Show HN post and decided to test it with Datasette’s OpenTelemetry support. The result: a working setup that feeds Datasette traces into Parseable and shows them in the Parseable localhost web app.
Parseable itself is new to the scene here: an observability platform with an open source Rust build under the AGPL, described as a single roughly 180MB binary. There’s also an Enterprise edition with extra features, plus a cloud-hosted option.
The hook is Datasette 1.0a41, which added OpenTelemetry support thanks to Alex Garcia. That gave Willison a path to connect the pieces, so he used Codex to work out how to run Parseable and send Datasette traces to it.
He says the post is a human-written TIL about the patterns that worked. The proof is the screenshot: a Datasette trace sitting inside Parseable’s local interface, which is exactly the kind of small, practical integration that makes observability tools feel real instead of ceremonial.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the sensible end of the observability arms race: fewer glossy promises, more tools that actually accept traces and show something useful. Open source plus a local binary is a nice reminder that not every serious tool needs a committee-sized deployment story. The cloud pitch can wait; first prove the thing works on localhost.
Read more about this at: Simon Willison’s Weblog
