Track ADP parity for feature-gated OTLP delta-interval inference

[lucastemb]

Summary

Track future ADP support for inferring reporting intervals from OTLP delta metric timestamps.

The implementation work is described in #2076. We are deferring it because the corresponding Core Agent behavior is currently controlled by the OpenTelemetry Collector feature gate:

exporter.datadogexporter.InferIntervalForDeltaMetrics

Current state

• The upstream gate is Alpha and defaults to disabled.
• A standalone OpenTelemetry Collector operator can enable the gate with its startup feature-gate option.
• The Core Agent embeds Collector components in-process. We have not identified a supported Core Agent configuration or CLI option that lets an operator enable this gate for Agent OTLP Ingest.
• ADP is a separate process with a native Rust OTLP translator, so it cannot inherit the Core Agent process's feature-gate state.
• Implementing Infer delta intervals for OTLP metrics in ADP #2076 now would require ADP-only conditional behavior for functionality that Core does not currently expose or enable by default.

The gate was introduced in upstream Collector Contrib in September 2025 and remains Alpha as of July 2026. Promotion timing is not predictable.

Decision

Defer #2076. Do not add Core-to-ADP feature-gate streaming or an ADP customer-facing toggle at this time.

Revisit when

Revisit this work when either:

1. Core Agent adopts a Collector version where this behavior is default-enabled, such as after promotion to Beta.
2. We explicitly decide to enable and evaluate this behavior independently in ADP/DDOT experimentation.
3. Core Agent exposes a supported configuration for the embedded Collector gate.

Follow-up scope

When resumed, complete #2076:

• infer intervals for supported delta metric kinds;
• preserve interval metadata through ADP's metric model and encoding;
• validate parity with Core Agent behavior;
• make the behavior normal ADP processing if Core defaults it on, rather than retaining a permanent ADP-only gate.

References

• Infer delta intervals for OTLP metrics in ADP #2076
• Upstream introduction: [exporter/datadog] Add 'exporter.datadogexporter.InferIntervalForDeltaMetrics' feature gate open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib#42494
• Upstream gate metadata: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/pkg/datadog/internal/metadata/generated_feature_gates.go