Tracing

cycgraph includes opt-in OpenTelemetry tracing that gives you full visibility into workflow execution — node timings, LLM calls, supervisor decisions, and tool invocations. When tracing is disabled (the default), all tracing code is a no-op with zero overhead.

Quick start

1. Initialize at startup

Call initTracing() once before any traced code runs:

import { initTracing } from '@cycgraph/orchestrator';

await initTracing('my-app');

2. Set the endpoint

Tracing activates when the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable is set:

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318 node app.js

When the variable is unset, initTracing() returns immediately — OpenTelemetry modules are never imported (dynamic imports), so there is zero bundle or runtime cost.

3. View traces

cycgraph ships with a Jaeger service in Docker Compose:

docker compose up jaeger
open http://localhost:16686

Any OTLP-compatible collector works: Jaeger, Axiom, Honeycomb, Grafana Tempo, LangFuse, or your own.

Span hierarchy

Every workflow run produces a tree of spans that maps directly to the execution flow:

workflow.run
├── node.execute.supervisor
│   └── supervisor.route          (one per routing decision)
├── node.execute.agent
│   └── agent.execute             (one per LLM call)
├── node.execute.evolution
│   └── evaluator.evaluate        (one per candidate evaluation)
└── node.execute.tool

Each node.execute.* span captures the node ID and type. Child spans add execution-specific detail.

Note

When using runner.stream(), node-level spans are skipped to avoid interfering with real-time token delivery. Use event listeners (node:start, node:complete) for streaming observability instead.

Span attributes

workflow.run

Attribute	Type	Description
workflow.id	string	Workflow ID
graph.id	string	Graph definition ID
graph.name	string	Graph name
run.id	string	Unique run ID
workflow.duration_ms	number	Total wall-clock duration
workflow.status	string	Final status (completed, failed, etc.)
workflow.iterations	number	Total graph iterations executed

agent.execute

Attribute	Type	Description
agent.id	string	Agent UUID
agent.model	string	Model ID (e.g. claude-sonnet-4-20250514)
agent.provider	string	Provider name (e.g. anthropic)
agent.attempt	number	Retry attempt (1 = first try)
agent.duration_ms	number	LLM call duration
agent.tokens.input	number	Input tokens consumed
agent.tokens.output	number	Output tokens generated
agent.tokens.total	number	Total tokens
agent.tools_called	number	Number of tool invocations
agent.error	string	Error message (on failure only)

supervisor.route

Attribute	Type	Description
supervisor.id	string	Supervisor node ID
supervisor.decision	string	Chosen next node (or __done__)
supervisor.reasoning	string	LLM’s explanation for the routing choice
supervisor.iteration	number	Current supervisor iteration
supervisor.input_tokens	number	Input tokens consumed
supervisor.output_tokens	number	Output tokens generated

evaluator.evaluate

Attribute	Type	Description
evaluator.agent_id	string	Evaluator agent UUID
evaluator.score	number	Quality score (0.0–1.0)
evaluator.tokens	number	Total tokens consumed

Using tracers in custom code

If you build custom node executors or utilities, you can create spans using the exported helpers:

import { getTracer, withSpan } from '@cycgraph/orchestrator';

const tracer = getTracer('my-custom-module');

const result = await withSpan(tracer, 'my.operation', async (span) => {
  span.setAttribute('my.custom_attr', 'value');
  // ... your logic ...
  return someResult;
});

withSpan automatically:

• Creates a child span under the current async context
• Sets span status to OK on success
• Sets span status to ERROR and records the exception on failure
• Ends the span in a finally block (guaranteed cleanup)

getTracer() returns a no-op tracer when OpenTelemetry is not initialized, so your code works identically with or without tracing enabled.

Metrics

initTracing() also initializes an optional metrics subsystem (gated separately by METRICS_ENABLED=true). Built-in metric recording functions:

Function	What it records
recordWorkflowDuration(ms)	Workflow wall-clock time
recordTokensUsed(count)	Token consumption
recordCostUsd(amount)	Dollar cost
recordAgentDuration(ms)	Per-agent LLM call time
incrementWorkflowsStarted()	Workflow start counter
incrementWorkflowsCompleted()	Workflow completion counter
incrementWorkflowsFailed()	Workflow failure counter

All metric functions accept optional labels and are zero-cost no-ops when metrics are disabled.

Graceful shutdown

initTracing() registers SIGTERM and SIGINT handlers that flush pending spans and shut down the SDK cleanly. No additional cleanup code is needed.

Next steps

• Evaluations — verify agent behavior with automated eval suites
• Streaming — real-time event observability (alternative to spans)