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Jaeger

INFRA · APIS
Velocity3.8

End-to-end distributed tracing platform for microservices

jaegertracing.io ↗

Jaeger folds its MCP server into the query service and drops Elasticsearch 6

mcptrace-summarieselasticsearchclickhousebreaking-changes
◆Current state
Jaeger's 2.x line is releasing roughly monthly, and two threads dominate. The storage layer is being modernised and pruned — Elasticsearch 6 support removed, rotation and index-cleaner feature gates promoted to beta, ClickHouse gaining TLS and analyzer fixes, configurable max trace duration. The other thread is the query surface: a lightweight trace-summaries endpoint added in 2.19 then given a native Elasticsearch implementation in 2.20, and the MCP extension merged into the query extension.
◆Where it's heading
Jaeger is treating machine consumption of traces as a first-class query path rather than an add-on. Merging jaegermcp into jaegerquery means the MCP surface ships wherever query ships, and trace summaries give both the UI and any agent a cheap way to scan results before pulling full traces. On storage, the direction is fewer supported backends maintained better, with ClickHouse steadily gaining parity.
◆Prediction
Expect the trace-summaries path to become the default for search across storage backends, and further ClickHouse feature work as the Elasticsearch surface is trimmed rather than extended.

◆Recent moves

  1. 3mo ago

    MCP merges into the query service; Elasticsearch 6 support removed

    ⚡ SPARK

    The most consequential release in this window on both axes: the MCP extension stops being separate and becomes part of jaegerquery, while Elasticsearch 6 is dropped and rotation and index-cleaner gates reach beta. Native trace summaries land here too, completing the lightweight-search path started in 2.19.

    View source ↗
  2. 4mo ago

    Lightweight trace-summaries endpoint arrives in the v3 API

    A new GET /api/v3/trace-summaries endpoint plus a matching gRPC handler introduce cheap search results that do not require fetching whole traces. This is the groundwork that 2.20 later backs with a native Elasticsearch implementation, and ClickHouse picks up TLS configuration in the same release.

    View source ↗
  3. 5mo ago

    Header forwarding to storage backends and UI base-path autodetection

    Configurable header forwarding to Elasticsearch, OpenSearch and gRPC storage backends is the substantive addition, useful for multi-tenant and auth-proxied deployments. The MCP tidying here — normalising span_kind input, removing a non-standard health tool — shows the extension being groomed before its merge into query.

    View source ↗
  4. 7mo ago

    Clock-skew and jitter fixes; metrics storage exposed to the UI

    A fix-heavy release whose useful additions are exposing metrics-storage capabilities to the UI and safer self-tracing through the OTEL collector telemetry factory. The clock-skew adjuster and jitter panic guards are the kind of correctness work that only surfaces at scale.

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  5. 7mo ago

    Legacy remote-sampling response format removed; Go 1.25.7 required

    Two breaking cleanups — the legacy remote sampling response format is gone and Go version consistency is enforced across the codebase — alongside query-service max trace size support and an empty span name sanitizer. Pruning rather than building, consistent with the storage trimming that follows.

    View source ↗
  6. 8mo ago

    Patch: default span kind in operations endpoint

    A two-item patch defaulting spanKind in the v3 operations endpoint and removing a deprecated protobuf wrapper. Notable only as the quiet baseline before the storage and query work picks up.

    View source ↗