Context Propagation: Causality Across Boundaries¶

Distributed systems require explicit propagation of correlation context (trace IDs, request IDs) across process/service boundaries to reconstruct causal chains.

Tension Addressed¶

Coverage vs. Cost - context propagation is the mechanism enabling trace reconstruction

Recognizable As¶

Headers or metadata carrying correlation IDs; parent-child span relationships; anything answering "which request caused this operation"

Canonical Sources¶

Sigelman et al., "Dapper, a Large-Scale Distributed Systems Tracing Infrastructure" (2010); OpenTelemetry specification

Transfers To¶

Distributed systems (causality tracking), Debugging (stack traces), Supply chain (provenance tracking), Audit systems (action attribution)

Context propagation is the essential mechanism that makes distributed tracing possible. Without it, you have isolated logs; with it, you have reconstructible request flows.