How It Works

What is CollectorGame?

CollectorGame is a gamified tutorial for the OpenTelemetry Collector. Each challenge presents sample telemetry data and asks you to write a YAML configuration that transforms it — redacting PII, filtering debug noise, extracting structured fields, and more. The app grades your config against the expected output.

How Challenges Work

Every challenge shows you sample log lines and a code editor pre-filled with a starter YAML config. You edit the config, hit "Validate Configuration", and the app checks your config against the expected solution. If correct, you earn points and build your streak.

Validation

When you submit a config, the app parses your YAML and checks it against the expected structure — processors, receivers, exporters, extensions, connectors, and pipeline wiring. If a collector binary is available locally, it also runs your config against a real OpenTelemetry Collector to compare output bodies.

Difficulty Tiers

Challenges are grouped into four tiers: Starter (1), Easy (37), Medium (69), and Hard (25). Difficulty is determined by a rubric across four dimensions: number of concepts required, OTTL complexity, number of config sections, and number of steps in the solution.

• Starter: Onboarding — delete a single attribute (always unlocked)
• Easy: Single-action processors, basic metric receivers, simple OTTL
• Medium: Multi-field configs, metric processing, exporter setup, conditional OTTL
• Hard: Multi-step pipelines, domain-specific configs, advanced OTTL

Tier Unlocks

Progression is tier-based. The Starter challenge is always unlocked. Complete the Starter to unlock Easy. Complete all 37 Easy challenges to unlock Medium. Complete all 69 Medium to unlock Hard.

Scoring

Each challenge has a base point value based on its difficulty tier:

• Starter: 100 points (+ 1,000 bonus on first completion!)
• Easy: 100–150 points
• Medium: 200–250 points
• Hard: 300–500 points

Using a hint costs 10 points (floor at 25% of base). Answer correctly and you build a streak — after 3 consecutive correct answers you earn a 25% bonus, increasing up to 100% at 6+. Wrong answers reset your streak to zero.

Player Level

Your player level equals the number of challenges you've completed. Starting at Level 0, you gain one level per challenge solved. This is a simple measure of your progress through the game.

Achievements

Earn achievements for hitting milestones:

• 🌱 First Steps — Complete your first challenge
• 🟢 Easy Street — Complete all Easy challenges
• 🟡 Getting Serious — Complete all Medium challenges
• 🔴 Hardcore — Complete all Hard challenges
• 🔥 Streak Master — Reach a streak of 10
• 💯 Centurion — Earn 1,000 total points
• 🏆 Completionist — Complete all 132 challenges

Hints

Each challenge has progressive hints. Revealing a hint costs 10 points from your total score. Hints mention the processor to use, the OTTL function, or the specific syntax needed.

Sound

Sound effects are synthesized in-browser using the Web Audio API. Toggle sound on/off using the speaker button in the score bar.