Micrometer is a Java library that provides a unified facade for application metrics, enabling instrumentation of code with counters, timers, gauges, and distribution summaries, and publishing them to various monitoring backends (Prometheus, Datadog, OTLP, Graphite, InfluxDB, etc.). It is not an application itself but a library designed to be embedded in Java applications. The architecture is modular: the core module defines the metrics API and abstractions (MeterRegistry, Meter, Counter, Timer, Gauge, DistributionSummary), while separate implementation modules provide backend-specific registries with their own naming conventions and transport protocols. Additionally, the observation module offers a higher-level API for tracing and context propagation, bridging metrics with observability. Key entry points include the MeterRegistry (for creating and managing meters) and the ObservationRegistry (for observation lifecycle). Data flows involve application code recording measurements via meters, which are aggregated in-memory and periodically pushed to configured backends via HTTP, UDP, or other protocols. The library also includes extensive instrumentation binders for popular frameworks (Jetty, OkHttp, gRPC, Kafka, JVM internals, etc.) that automatically collect metrics from those systems. External dependencies vary by implementation module but include HTTP clients (OkHttp, HttpURLConnection), monitoring system SDKs (AWS SDK for CloudWatch, Google Cloud for Stackdriver), and protocol libraries (OTel protobuf, StatsD). The core module has minimal dependencies, relying only on Java standard library and optional logging frameworks (SLF4J, Log4j, Logback).