thv serve crashes on startup when OTLP endpoint is configured but tracing/metrics are disabled

[peppescg]

Summary

thv serve fails to start with exit code 1 when an OTLP endpoint is configured via thv config otel set-endpoint but both tracing and metrics are disabled. This causes ToolHive Studio to show a "Health check failed" error since the server never comes up.

Error

Error: failed to initialize telemetry: OTLP endpoint is configured but both tracing and metrics are disabled; either enable tracing or metrics, or remove the endpoint

Steps to Reproduce

1. Configure an OTLP endpoint: thv config otel set-endpoint https://some-collector.example.com
2. Do not enable tracing or metrics
3. Run thv serve
4. Process exits immediately with code 1

Expected Behavior

thv serve should start successfully, logging a warning that the OTLP endpoint is configured but unused (since tracing and metrics are both disabled). The endpoint configuration should be silently ignored rather than treated as a fatal error.

Workaround

thv config otel unset-endpoint

Impact

This is a fatal error that prevents the server from starting entirely. Users of ToolHive Studio hit this as a blank "Health check failed" screen with no clear indication of the root cause — the error is only visible in the main process logs.

[mauriciocoder]

Wondering whether the fix proposed by Claude is sufficient to resolve the issue.

Suggested Fix

The fix should be in the thv binary's telemetry initialization logic. Instead of returning a fatal error when an OTLP endpoint is set but both tracing and metrics are disabled, thv should:

Log a warning and skip telemetry initialization, or
Treat this state as a no-op and continue starting normally.
Silently accepting an inconsistent telemetry config (endpoint set, exporters disabled) is preferable to crashing and making the entire application unusable.