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Instrument each logical agent run as a parent span, with child spans for model calls, tool invocations, retrieval, and other meaningful work. Propagate the active trace context across service boundaries; then use durations and provider-reported token usage on those spans to locate delays and estimate per-run cost. A trace makes usage attributable, but token counts alone do not establish the exact amount a provider will bill.

What an end-to-end agent trace should show

Think of a trace as the timeline and relationship map for one logical agent invocation. The agent-run span is the parent; individual model requests, tool calls, retrieval operations, and significant orchestration steps are children. OpenTelemetry’s walkthrough demonstrates this shape with an invoke_agent span containing chat and execute_tool child spans (OpenTelemetry’s GenAI observability walkthrough).

That hierarchy answers a practical question: if an answer took a long time, did the delay come from a model request, a slow downstream tool, retrieval, or a retry? The walkthrough frames the diagnostic scenario as: “Your AI agent just took 45 seconds to answer a simple question. Was it the model? A slow tool call? A retry loop?” The 45 seconds is an illustrative scenario, not a benchmark or a general latency finding.

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Keep the trace connected across boundaries

Use your tracing system’s normal context-propagation mechanism when work moves from the ingress service to the agent and onward to model and tool services. When those components are instrumented and propagation is configured correctly, their spans can remain part of the originating trace instead of appearing as unrelated operations. Exact setup depends on the frameworks and services in use.

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Trace context and conversation identity serve different purposes. Continue the active trace across the work, but attach a conversation ID only if the application actually has one. OpenTelemetry’s agent-span conventions caution against inventing a conversation ID from a new UUID, the trace identifier, or a content hash (GenAI agent span conventions).

Put identifiers in the right place

Use trace context or controlled span attributes for identifiers needed to investigate a particular run. Avoid high-cardinality user or conversation identifiers as metric labels: metrics with a separate time series for every user or conversation can become expensive and difficult to operate. Keep attributes subject to your access, retention, and privacy controls.

Which latency signals to collect

Measure the full agent-run duration as well as the duration of its model, tool, and retrieval operations. The GenAI metric conventions define gen_ai.client.operation.duration for client-side model operations. Examine it by requested model and provider where those dimensions are available, and compare component timings against the end-to-end span rather than assuming the model caused every slow run (GenAI metrics conventions).

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For streaming inference, total duration does not tell the whole story. The current conventions document gen_ai.server.time_to_first_token and gen_ai.server.time_per_output_token as useful timing metrics for successful streaming responses. Time to first token can help distinguish waiting or prefill delay from the pace of subsequent output. These server-side metrics are not necessarily emitted by every provider or instrumentation library.

Analyze distributions and failures

Use distributions and percentiles, not averages alone, to understand how latency behaves across requests. Separate successful calls from errors and timeouts so fast failures do not make successful responses appear faster. Set operational objectives based on your service’s needs and observed behavior: the cited conventions do not prescribe a universal latency target for all agents.

How to attribute token usage and cost

Record usage for each model call, alongside the provider and requested model. Where available, also retain the response model, input tokens, output tokens, and error status. OpenTelemetry’s walkthrough describes gen_ai.client.token.usage as token usage split by input or output type, and explains that this metric and the operation-duration histogram can support per-request cost estimates and latency-regression detection (OpenTelemetry’s GenAI observability walkthrough).

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Roll model-call usage up through the parent trace to estimate cost per agent run. Include tool usage and retry counts if the application records them; they help explain the work a run performed but do not replace provider billing data. Cost is calculated using usage and the provider’s billing rules, which can differ in how they treat cached tokens, image or reasoning tokens, and billing units. Prices and rules may change, so a calculation from token counts and a price table is an estimate unless reconciled with provider billing exports.

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Use billed counts correctly

If a provider reports both billed token counts and model-consumed counts, the OpenTelemetry conventions recommend using billed counts when the goal is to match the customer charge (GenAI agent span conventions; GenAI client span conventions). Check what the provider and instrumentation actually expose rather than assuming both values exist.

Do not add detailed token categories to an aggregate total when those categories are subsets of it. For example, if the instrumentation reports an aggregate and separately reports a detailed category included in that aggregate, summing both counts the same usage twice. Follow the provider’s accounting model and the semantic conventions for the fields you collect.

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Protect prompt and tool data in traces

Input and output messages, prompts, and tool payloads may contain personal or otherwise sensitive information. A trace viewer’s readable presentation does not make captured content less sensitive. Prefer not to record full content by default; if debugging requires it, make capture controlled and apply suitable access and retention limits. OpenTelemetry’s conventions allow filtering or truncating recorded messages and warn about sensitive content in message attributes (GenAI agent span conventions; GenAI client span conventions; OpenTelemetry’s GenAI observability walkthrough).

If the application has a real conversation identifier, instrumentation hooks or processors can attach it without substituting a trace ID or fabricating a new identifier. Keep that choice separate from whether prompt or response content is captured.

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Choose a backend by the trace and cost questions it can answer

An OpenTelemetry-compatible backend or a vendor-specific AI observability interface can both be candidates. Evaluate the implementation against the work your team needs to do:

  • Do parent and child spans remain connected across agent, model, tool, and service steps?
  • Which GenAI semantic conventions and metrics does it support, and how does it handle changes to those conventions?
  • Can you inspect run, model, tool, and retrieval latency in a way that helps isolate slow steps?
  • Can cost attribution use provider-reported billed usage, and can you distinguish estimates from reconciled charges?
  • What controls are available for prompt and tool-content capture, access, filtering, and retention?
  • What deployment, storage, and ongoing operational costs will the setup add?

Amazon OpenSearch Service documents an AI observability implementation built around OpenTelemetry and GenAI conventions (Amazon OpenSearch Service AI observability documentation). That example is one implementation, not evidence that it is superior to other backends.

Keep instrumentation adaptable

GenAI semantic conventions and vendor support evolve. Verify metric and attribute names against the current conventions and the versions of your instrumentation and backend when implementing or upgrading. Keep mappings adaptable so changes in provider fields or convention support do not silently break dashboards or cost rollups. The named OpenTelemetry pages are living specifications accessed October 3, 2026; check their current contents and your chosen backend’s behavior when you configure the system.

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