Quickstart

Get up and running with Kopai in under 5 minutes.

Prerequisites

• Node.js v22.5.0+ installed

Step 1: Start Kopai

Run the local backend — this starts an OTEL collector on port 4318 and an API server on port 8000:

npx @kopai/app start

Your app’s telemetry will be sent to http://localhost:4318 and you can query it or view the dashboard at http://localhost:8000.

Step 2: Instrument Your Application

See the integration guides for instrumentation examples for your programming language/runtime:

• Node.js
• JavaScript in the browser
• Python
• Go
• Java
• .NET
• Ruby
• PHP
• Rust
• C++
• Erlang

When running the app set the following env var to make the apps send telemetry to @kopai/app on localhost

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318

Step 3: Verify that your application instrumentation works as expected

Open @kopai/app web interface on http://localhost:8000

and inspect the Logs, Metrics and Traces

Step 4: Go multiplayer -> sign up for a Kopai account

(sign up for free beta here)

Step 5: Get Your Backend Token

1. Go to Settings → Access Tokens in your kopai.app dashboard
2. Click Generate Token
3. Copy the token (it won’t be shown again)

Step 6: Point Your App to Kopai Cloud

Set your Kopai endpoint and backend token as env vars for your instrumented app:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="https://otlp.kopai.app"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="Authorization=Bearer YOUR_BACKEND_TOKEN"

Step 7: Invite your team

1. Go to Team in your kopai.app dashboard
2. Click Invite Member

Step 8: Authenticate the CLI

Every team member can create their own CLI token to query traces, logs, and metrics sent to kopai.app:

1. Go to Settings → Access Tokens in your kopai.app dashboard
2. Click Generate Token and select CLI as the token type
3. Copy the token

Then log in:

npx @kopai/cli login

Paste the CLI token at the prompt. See Authentication for full details.