Q: What is a trace? – Hamel’s Blog - Hamel Husain
A trace is the complete record of all actions, messages, tool calls, and data retrievals from a single initial user query through to the final response. It includes every step across all agents, tools, and system components in a session: multiple user messages, assistant responses, retrieved documents, and intermediate tool interactions.
Note on terminology: Different observability vendors use varying definitions of traces and spans. Alex Strick van Linschoten’s analysis highlights these differences (screenshot below):
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