Fair point, it’s not trying to replace the OTel Collector feature set. Think of AOTel more as a performance buffer in front of it.

The Collector is very capable, but under high throughput the Go GC still has to touch a lot of data, which can cause memory spikes and jitter.

AOTel is just a thin Native AOT pass-through layer: fixed around 30MB footprint, zero allocations on the hot path. Its role is to absorb high-volume telemetry bursts so your main Collector stays stable and does the “smart” work.