Claude Platform opens OpenTelemetry tracing beta: Messages API, Managed Agents and SDK spans flow to your own observability stack
On 2026-10-14 Anthropic put OpenTelemetry tracing for Claude Platform into public beta. Admins add a telemetry destination in the Claude Console and the API exports spans for Messages API requests and Managed Agents sessions server-side with no code changes, while the Claude SDKs export client-side spans for requests and tool-runner tools. Spans follow the OpenTelemetry gen_ai conventions and default to metadata (duration, status, token counts, model, tool names), with an optional full-content mode.
Key Takeaways
- Two paths: a server-side destination via Console/Admin API (Messages API + Managed Agents, no code changes) or client-side spans from the Claude SDK (overview)
- Destinations need OTLP/HTTP with protobuf over HTTPS on port 443; the Admin API uses the
anthropic-beta: telemetry-destinations-2026-08-11header (API guide) - SDK tracing covers Python, TypeScript, Go and Java (anthropic-java 2.72.0+), and runs on Claude API, AWS, Bedrock, Google Cloud and Microsoft Foundry, all in beta (SDK guide)
- Metadata-only or full-content modes; ZDR customers can still export full content for Messages API requests (held in memory until delivered); Managed Agents is not ZDR-eligible
- Anthropic warns span names and SDK options may change during the beta, so pin SDK versions
Linked Models & Agents: