
On 14 October 2026 Anthropic launched OpenTelemetry export in beta[1]. Messages API requests, tool uses and Claude Managed Agents sessions can be recorded as OpenTelemetry spans[1,2].
The traces can be viewed in the observability platform you already use[2]. Anthropic describes uses such as debugging failed or slow requests, tracking token spend and latency, and building evals from real traffic[2].
There are two ways to collect them: SDK tracing and API tracing[2]. With SDK tracing, registering a tracer provider in the Python, TypeScript, C#, Go, Java, PHP or Ruby SDK records the requests of clients that use the SDK[1,2].
With API tracing, adding a destination in the Claude Console records requests from any client[1,2]. Adding a destination requires the Admin permission[2]. It is supported on the Claude Platform and Claude Platform on AWS[2].
Any observability platform that accepts OTLP can be a destination, and the partners listed include Datadog, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Langfuse, LangSmith, New Relic and Sentry[2].
Whether spans include prompts and responses is set per destination and per SDK client[2]. The default, Metadata only, sends identifiers, timing, status, token counts and similar data[2]. Full content adds the prompts and responses[2].
For organizations with a HIPAA, FERPA or K-12 data-handling restriction, API destinations export only metadata regardless of their setting[2]. Organizations with zero data retention can still use Full content[2]. For Messages API requests, the content is held only in memory until it is delivered[2].
With Full content, each span holds up to 0.75 MB of content by default[2]. That fits a 200K-token context of English text[2]. Content over the limit is shortened, and anthropic.content.truncated is set to true[2].
Keeping a full 1 million token context needs about 4 MB[2]. The limit can be changed with traces.max_content_bytes in the SDK, or in the advanced settings of a destination in the Console[2].