Fix sfn x-datadog-tags input

[ojproductions]

What Does This Do

uses standard context propagator to build stepfunctions input rather than manually written json

x-datadog-tags input no longer encodes span tags but rather the expected _dd.p.* string. The previous value was getting dropped by the extension. This mirrors the values in the other aws integrations ( sns, eventbridge, etc)

Motivation

SLES-2981
x-datadog-tags is defined as a string, but it was being emitted as an object. This caused the extension's Step Functions deserializer to reject the whole _datadog payload.

Additional Notes

non datadog-x-* style payload inputs can be injected but do not get extracted on the extension side. That is a limitation right now, but is consistent with other implementations in this and other tracers. Any fix would be on the extension side

Consistent with the SNS and EventBridge instrumentations in this repo, and with how dd-trace-js and dd-trace-py build the same _datadog payload.

Contributor Checklist

• Format the title according to the contribution guidelines
• Assign the type: and (comp: or inst:) labels in addition to any other useful labels
• Avoid using close, fix, or any linking keywords when referencing an issue
  Use solves instead, and assign the PR milestone to the issue
• Update the CODEOWNERS file on source file addition, migration, or deletion
• Update public documentation with any new configuration flags or behaviors
• Once approved, use merge queue to merge the PR

Jira ticket: SLES-2981

[ojproductions]

@codex review

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

Codex Review: Didn't find any major issues. 🎉

Reviewed commit: 3bb82d7eca

ℹ️ About Codex in GitHub

Your team has set up Codex to review pull requests in this repo. Reviews are triggered when you

• Open a pull request for review
• Mark a draft as ready
• Comment "@codex review".

If Codex has suggestions, it will comment; otherwise it will react with 👍.

Codex can also answer questions or update the PR. Try commenting "@codex address that feedback".

[datadog-prod-us1-5]

🎯 Code Coverage (details)
• Patch Coverage: 100.00%
• Overall Coverage: 69.74% (+10.70%)

_{This comment will be updated automatically if new data arrives.
🔗 Commit SHA: 5448550 | Docs | View more details | Give us feedback!}

[dd-octo-sts]

🟢 Java Benchmark SLOs — All performance SLOs passed

Suite	Status
Startup	🟢 pass

SLO thresholds are defined here based on automatically generated metrics. A warning is raised when results are within 5% of the threshold.

PR vs. master results

Scenario	Candidate	master	Δ (95% CI of mean)
startup:insecure-bank:iast:Agent	14.86 s	14.67 s	[+0.4%; +2.1%] (maybe worse)
startup:insecure-bank:tracing:Agent	13.69 s	13.77 s	[-1.6%; +0.5%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:appsec:Agent	17.04 s	16.70 s	[-4.2%; +8.2%] (unstable)
startup:petclinic:iast:Agent	17.42 s	16.97 s	[-1.7%; +7.0%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:profiling:Agent	17.51 s	17.47 s	[-1.2%; +1.5%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:sca:Agent	17.48 s	17.48 s	[-1.0%; +1.0%] (no difference)
startup:petclinic:tracing:Agent	16.51 s	16.73 s	[-2.1%; -0.4%] (maybe better)

Commit: 54485506 · CI Pipeline · Benchmarking Platform UI

---

Load and DaCapo benchmarks can be triggered manually in the GitLab pipeline. Results will appear in the Benchmarking Platform UI after completion.

[datadog-prod-us1-5]

More details

The configured propagator writes the required sampling priority and string-valued propagation tags without a reportable regression.

Was this helpful? React 👍 or 👎

_{Open Bits AI session}

_{🤖 Datadog Autotest · Commit e7f5aca · What is Autotest? · @DataDog review to ask questions · Any feedback? Reach out in #autotest}

[AlexeyKuznetsov-DD]

Approving, but I would ask for review @DylanLovesCoffee (as I can see from commits history)

[DylanLovesCoffee]

LGTM we should probably make sure this isn't breaking other runtime implementations as well (e.g., .NET, Go, etc) if we haven't already

[jordan-wong]

LGTM from IDM side, left 1 comment

[dd-octo-sts]

/merge

[gh-worker-devflow-routing-ef8351]

View all feedbacks in Devflow UI.

2026-09-04 21:23:05 UTC ℹ️ Start processing command /merge

---

2026-09-04 21:23:10 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: pull request added to the queue

The expected merge time in master is approximately 1h (p90).

---

2026-09-04 22:43:24 UTC ℹ️ MergeQueue: This merge request was merged