Inject W3C Trace Context into vMCP backend HTTP requests

[ChrisJBurns]

Summary

• Add tracePropagatingRoundTripper to the vMCP HTTP transport chain that injects traceparent/tracestate headers into outgoing backend requests, linking vMCP and backend spans in the same distributed trace
• Propagator is injected as a struct field (not global lookup per request) for testability and consistency with telemetryBackendClient's tracer injection pattern
• Uses otel.GetTextMapPropagator().Inject() instead of otelhttp.NewTransport() to avoid creating duplicate client spans (telemetry.go already creates them)
• Clones requests before header injection, consistent with authRoundTripper and the http.RoundTripper contract
• Update transport chain comment to accurately describe all layers

Context

When vMCP calls backend MCP servers, traces appeared as separate, unlinked traces in Tempo. The vMCP telemetry middleware correctly creates client spans, but outgoing HTTP requests never received W3C Trace Context headers, so backends created new root spans instead of continuing the trace.

Confirmed via Tempo: tools/call yardstick-traced_echo and tools/call echo had different trace IDs despite being the same request flow.

How trace context flows

This PR closes the gap on the outgoing side of vMCP → backend communication. The full trace chain now works:

Client span (from HTTP headers or _meta)
  └── vMCP server span
        └── vMCP client span
              └── Backend server span

Incoming (already implemented): The telemetry middleware (pkg/telemetry/middleware.go:167-177) extracts trace context from both HTTP headers and the MCP _meta field, with _meta taking priority per the MCP OTEL spec.

Outgoing (this PR): The tracePropagatingRoundTripper injects trace context into HTTP headers on all outgoing requests to backends. This works for every MCP method (tools/call, tools/list, resources/read, prompts/get, initialize, etc.), unlike _meta injection which would only cover methods that carry _meta in their params.

Callers providing _meta

If a caller includes traceparent in the MCP _meta field:

{
  "jsonrpc": "2.0",
  "method": "tools/call",
  "params": {
    "_meta": {
      "traceparent": "00-abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890-1234567890abcdef-01"
    },
    "name": "yardstick-traced_echo",
    "arguments": {"input": "hello"}
  },
  "id": 2
}

The vMCP spans will appear as children within that trace, and the backend spans will chain from there — giving a complete distributed trace from client through vMCP to backend.

Design decisions

• HTTP headers, not _meta injection: HTTP header propagation is the primary mechanism because it works universally for all MCP methods. The InjectMetaTraceContext infrastructure exists in pkg/telemetry/propagation.go but is not used for outgoing requests — this could be a follow-up for methods that support _meta.
• Not otelhttp.NewTransport(): That would create duplicate client spans since telemetryBackendClient in pkg/vmcp/server/telemetry.go already creates SpanKindClient spans for each backend operation.
• Propagator as struct field: Instead of calling otel.GetTextMapPropagator() on every request, the propagator is captured at client creation time. This makes tests parallel-safe (no global state mutation) and is consistent with how the tracer is injected in telemetryBackendClient.

Test plan

• 4 table-driven unit tests: header injection, no-span context, error propagation, no-op propagator
• 1 standalone unit test: parent-child span ID propagation
• go test ./pkg/vmcp/client/... -race passes (all tests run in parallel)
• task lint-fix reports 0 issues
• Deploy to Kind cluster with OTEL stack, verify in Tempo that backend spans share trace ID with vMCP spans

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 67.14%. Comparing base (1b6eb19) to head (0c60b97).
⚠️ Report is 2 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##             main    #3814   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   67.13%   67.14%           
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  Files         442      442           
  Lines       44467    44474    +7     
=======================================
+ Hits        29853    29860    +7     
- Misses      12277    12280    +3     
+ Partials     2337     2334    -3     

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