Streams & Keys

A Stream is where one kind of telemetry lives. An ingest key lets something write to it. You manage both under Telemetry → Manage Streams in the Console.

Streams

Click + New Stream, pick a type, then give it a name and a retention.

• The type decides what it accepts (below).
• The retention is 7, 15, 30, 60 or 90 days, up to your plan's maximum. Data older than that is deleted automatically.

Stream types

Type	HTTP API	OpenTelemetry
Events	JSON events	logs
Logs	JSON, NDJSON or plain text	logs
Traces	JSON spans	traces
Metrics	JSON metrics	metrics

Send each signal to a Stream of its own type. OpenTelemetry apps usually have three Streams: one each for traces, metrics and logs.

Naming

Name Streams after where the data comes from: Checkout Traces, Checkout Metrics, Checkout Logs. It keeps the Explore picker readable once you have a few services.

Ingest keys

Select a Stream, open Keys & Setup and click Issue Key. Keys look like lit_... and are shown only once, so copy it straight into your secret manager.

A key writes to its one Stream and nothing else: it decides where data goes, so requests don't name a Stream. It can't read data or touch your account, which makes it safe to use in browser code.

Each key shows its state and when it was last used:

State	Meaning
Active	Accepted
Disabled	Paused: requests get 401 until you click Enable
Revoked	Permanently rejected

Disable is the quick way to stop a misbehaving sender without losing the key. Revoke can't be undone.

Rotating a key

A Stream can have several keys at once, so rotate without downtime:

1. Click Issue Key to create the new key.
2. Deploy it.
3. Click Revoke on the old key once everything is using the new one.

Disabling, enabling and revoking all take effect within seconds, everywhere.

Key limits

Click Limits on a key to cap its requests or data per minute below your plan's budget. Use it for keys you can't keep secret, like one in browser code: if it leaks, the most it can send is its limit. Over the limit, requests with that key get 429, and the rest of your keys carry on. See Rate limits.

Usage and ingest health

Click Details in Explore (or select a Stream in Manage Streams) to open its Overview:

• Live status: whether data is arriving right now, and how fast.
• Usage this month and in the last 24 hours: events, data received, and records rejected, dropped, throttled or sampled out, next to the account's monthly events.
• Ingest health: every reason data was rejected, dropped, throttled or set aside in the last 7 days, with a count and an example. Find dropped records searches for them in Explore.
• Limits that apply to the Stream, and its settings.

If Latency ever blocks a key or Stream (for abuse, or a runaway sender), the Overview says so and why, and senders get 403 ingest_blocked.

Deleting a Stream

Click Delete Stream. It stops accepting data immediately (senders get 401s) and moves to Deleted Streams at the bottom of the list, where you can:

• Restore it, keys and data included.
• Delete Permanently, which erases its data, keys and alerts. This can't be undone.

Who can manage Streams

Anyone with write access to the namespace can create and delete Streams and issue, disable or revoke keys. Read-only members can still explore the data and see each Stream's Overview.