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Pipeline visualizer

The visualizer is the right-hand pane of the Configuration editor. It takes the YAML and renders the collector's signal pipelines as swimlanes — one per signal type — using Cytoscape.js under the hood.

What you see

For each pipeline (traces, metrics, logs, profiles):

  • a row of receiver nodes on the left,
  • one or more processor nodes,
  • optional connector nodes that fork or join signals,
  • exporter nodes on the right,
  • arrows between them showing the signal flow.

Each component node is labelled by its YAML alias (otlp/edge, batch, prometheusremotewrite/central).

Cross-pipeline linking

Hover any node to see the corresponding YAML lines highlighted in the editor pane. Click a node to jump the editor to that section. Conversely, click a component definition in the YAML to highlight its node in the visualizer.

Connectors

Connectors fork or join signals across pipelines. The visualizer draws connector edges that cross signal lanes — for example, a spanmetrics connector takes the traces pipeline and emits into the metrics pipeline.

Unused components

Components that are defined in the receivers: / processors: / exporters: block but never referenced in service.pipelines are greyed out and tagged "unused". Clean YAML never has these.

Validation overlay

If validation has flagged a problem on a specific pipeline, the lane is bordered red and the problematic node has a warning chip. Hover for the validation message.

Layout

The visualizer auto-lays out top-to-bottom (one lane per signal, left-to-right within a lane). For very wide pipelines, an expand toggle moves layout to a force-directed style; useful for connector- heavy configurations.

Why it is read-first

The visualizer is deliberately a read-first view. Drag-and-drop authoring lives in the Visual editor, which writes back to YAML. The visualizer alone never mutates anything — it is a mirror of the YAML.

This split keeps the easy case (just looking at a config to understand it) ergonomic and obvious, without conflating it with the more involved case of editing.