> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://www.truefoundry.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Overview

> Overview of distributed tracing concepts and supported languages for OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation.

Distributed tracing is a method of monitoring and profiling applications built on a microservices architecture. It helps you understand how requests flow through your distributed system, identify performance bottlenecks, and debug issues across multiple services.

## What is Distributed Tracing?

Distributed tracing tracks the path of a request as it flows through multiple services in a distributed system. Each request is assigned a unique trace ID, and individual operations within that request are captured as spans. This creates a complete picture of the request's journey through your system.

## Supported languages and Frameworks

TrueFoundry offers an OpenTelemetry collector backend for storing OpenTelemetry-based traces.
You can instrument your applications using any programming language with any OpenTelemetry client to publish traces.
TrueFoundry provides comprehensive OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation guides for the following languages.

<Note>
  Before you can publish any traces to TrueFoundry, you must create a trace project.
  This is a mandatory step for setting up tracing.
  Learn how to [create and configure your trace project](/docs/tracing/tracing-getting-started#step-1-create-a-trace-project).
</Note>

<Columns cols={2}>
  <Card title="Python" href="/docs/tracing/distributed-tracing/python-overview">
    Python application tracing
  </Card>

  <Card title="NodeJs" href="/docs/tracing/distributed-tracing/nodejs-opentelemetry">
    NodeJs application tracing
  </Card>

  <Card title="Java" href="/docs/tracing/distributed-tracing/java-opentelemetry">
    Java application tracing
  </Card>

  <Card title="Go" href="/docs/tracing/distributed-tracing/golang-opentelemetry">
    Go application tracing
  </Card>
</Columns>