The Silent Trace Gap: Why Next.js Breaks OpenTelemetry Context

OpenTelemetry traces silently fragment when requests cross Next.js's edge/server boundary—a critical observability blind spot that developers won't notice until examining their collector. Without explicit propagator configuration, distributed traces are orphaned and disconnected, making it impossible to correlate activity across environments and root-cause issues. This configuration oversight undermines the entire value proposition of observability in modern full-stack JavaScript applications.