Honeycomb Tracing

Produce an inspectable waterfall tied to the actual run or CI attempt, explain which intervals dominate elapsed time, and identify the smallest useful next experiment. Respect diagnosis-only requests; tracing does not itself authorize replaying tasks, changing credentials, or deploying instrumentation.

Choose the data path

Repository-relative paths and commands assume the checkout root. The maintained contracts are doc/observability.md and doc/ci-profiling.md; recheck them and the owning code when a deployed version differs.

Keep the repository's three paths distinct:

• Observability: operator-configured OpenTelemetry export to Honeycomb or another OTLP destination. With no endpoint, this tracing stays off.
• Telemetry: first-party events under packages/shared/src/telemetry/, sent to Paperclip by default unless opted out. Adding these requires the generated contract, Telemetry README, and privacy-review workflow in AGENTS.md.
• Run log: local heartbeat_run_events and measured performance events. Useful for correlation, but a local event is not proof of Honeycomb export.

Observability changes within the closed span-attribute allowlist do not need the Telemetry privacy review. Preserve the endpoint gate and no-operation behavior.

Find the application's trace

1. Resolve the instance, company, issue, agent, run UUID, and UTC interval. Record the effective harness/model, workspace/repository, warm or fresh session, and actual deployed revision. A task identifier is not a run UUID; one task can have several runs, and one run can have several execution attempts.

2. Prefer existing Honeycomb tools when exposed and authorized. Otherwise use the signed-in browser. The current project link targets team paperclip, environment test, dataset paperclip, and service.name = paperclip. These are defaults in ui/src/lib/honeycomb-run-link.ts, not proof of every deployment's destination. Verify the target before comparing data.

3. Open View in Honeycomb on the run page when available. It requires Paperclip Developer Mode and local implicit board or instance-admin access. This link queries existing data. Re-run with provider trace is a different action: it starts work and is not needed to read Honeycomb.

4. Without the link, calculate the same correlation value locally:

   # Set RUN_ID to the exact saved run UUID first; no trailing newline is hashed.
   node -e 'console.log(require("node:crypto").createHash("sha256").update(process.argv[1]).digest("hex").slice(0, 12))' "$RUN_ID"
   

   Filter paperclip.task.run.run_id to that 12-character lowercase hash and service.name to the observed service. Start with the run's absolute time window. The product link defaults to the last seven days; widen it for older runs. Group COUNT by trace.trace_id to discover matching traces.

5. The product's root filter is name in [task.execution_attempt, task.provider_session, task.run]. Use Honeycomb's in operator, not an invented OR group. Remove the name filter when setup failed or preparation spans are missing; older/standalone preparation can have a separate trace ID.

6. Open each relevant trace and its span details. A count-only query/export cannot establish span durations, parentage, or causal attribution. Capture the trace URL, time window, service/version, and relevant span names/timings.

In recent investigations, HONEYCOMB_TEST_CONFIG_API_KEY in the operator's ~/.secrets could read metadata but could not query traces. Ingest permission, metadata access, and query access are different. Verify current capabilities; when queries are unavailable, use the signed-in UI rather than creating a new key or upgrading permissions. Read only needed secret fields, never dump the file, and keep values out of commands, artifacts, repository files, and reports.

Read the timeline correctly

The attempt and provider lifecycle are linked roots; they need not share a trace ID. Neither is a guarantee of one continuous trace across queueing or restarts. Correlate with the run log and saved reply timestamps. The native local event task.run.measured includes terminal elapsed time and durable copyback.

Use start/end times to compare serial intervals and the union of parallel work. Never add a parent to its children or sum parallel branches as elapsed time. For example, configuration_skills is inside execution_configuration, and skills.prepare overlaps the broader heartbeat.prepare_before_environment. Detail spans are capped at 16 per name per attempt; missing per-item children do not mean later items did no work.

Distinguish first streamed text, committed reply, externally delivered message, and browser paint. A successful response.transaction.commit proves durable storage; response.publish is enqueueing and execution.realtime is server dispatch. Neither proves that the user saw the response. Choose the boundary the user asked to improve, then measure the whole path to that boundary.

For slow issue pages, combine issue.read.<phase> with Server-Timing (paperclip_issue, issue_<phase>) and the browser's request waterfall and issue-detail:navigate→content-paint measure. Concurrent reads overlap. Fast API completion does not establish fast conversation reveal or rendering.

A long parent span without children is an attribution gap. It does not prove SQL, network, or model time. For database hypotheses, use fix-slow-queries. For CPU hypotheses, use a bounded authorized profile covering the actual slow phase; a sample taken while queued cannot explain preparation. Low aggregate container CPU does not exclude a blocked Node main thread. Keep profiled diagnostics separate from unprofiled acceptance timings.

Design a human-readable waterfall

A collapsed trace should tell a person what the system is doing; expanding a phase should explain where its time went. Before adding or reorganizing spans, sketch the meaningful phases and compare them with the existing exported tree. For application runs, make preparation, runner startup, agent work, and settlement easy to distinguish. For CI, retain workflow/job/step/file/test ownership.

• Group by purpose: file staging belongs under stage.sync, with workspace and asset branches such as stage.asset.home; provider operations belong beneath the work that caused them. Reuse the owning path's existing semantic groups.
• Use real OpenTelemetry parent contexts. A dotted name or a parentName attribute alone does not make a foldable hierarchy. A flat trace can need better parentage even when it already has enough measurements.
• Preserve useful detail beneath the groups. Improve folding before deleting spans; account for any measurement moved to an attribute, event, or run log.
• Make the hierarchy truthful on failure and during concurrent work. Cleanup belongs to settlement even when startup fails; long-lived processes need an owner that covers their lifetime. Preserve documented links between separate attempts and provider lifecycles rather than forcing everything into one root.

Read trace design when designing or reviewing a hierarchy. It includes a staging example, lifecycle pitfalls, and acceptance checks for the actual exported waterfall. The current Observability contract owns exact span names and boundaries; historical examples are not a new schema.

Add only the missing instrumentation

Read applicable repository rules before editing. Reuse the existing timing seams:

• server/src/services/execution-preparation-timing.ts: withRunExecutionTiming, createRunPreparationTiming, measureRunPhase, and beginRunPhase. Use the existing attempt; do not create a new root per detail.
• server/src/services/native-runtime/native-run-trace.ts: native lifecycle hierarchy and links to the owning attempt.
• server/src/services/issue-read-timing.ts: issue-read phases and Server-Timing.
• packages/adapter-utils/src/acpx-engine/startup-timing.ts: runtime parent context and closed span attributes. Adapter utilities receive the host context rather than constructing an independent exporter.

Extend the closed phase union when a meaningful boundary is missing. Wrap the actual awaited operation, preserve parent context across async/provider boundaries, and end spans on success and failure. Keep real wall times for spans recorded after the operation. Use existing hashed IDs, closed enums, and allowed numeric counts; do not add prompts, tool arguments/results, paths, raw identifiers, credentials, or exception text. Do not enable all filesystem instrumentation to explain one slow scan.

Observability must not retry the operation, replace its return/error, change authorization/locks, or break execution when the tracer fails. Preserve root sampling and the explicit endpoint gate even if another library registers an OTel provider. Update doc/observability.md when the trace contract changes. Run focused tests for endpoint-off behavior, parentage/concurrent-run isolation, failure handling, and the changed seam. Use real exported evidence to claim that new spans appear in Honeycomb; a unit-test tracer alone does not prove ingestion. For hierarchy changes, also inspect collapsed and expanded exported views using the trace-design acceptance checks.

Compare and hand back useful evidence

Choose the largest actionable serial wait or unexplained gap, then reproduce it at the smallest faithful layer. Compare matched runs: same harness/model, workspace size, session warmth, concurrency, and relevant revision/configuration. Report sample count and median/range when several runs are available. Preserve failures; a failed fast run is not a latency improvement.

Return the run/attempt and trace links, observed revision, end-to-end timing, dominant non-overlapping phases, uncertainty, and next action or verified gain. Label local, synthetic, and hosted evidence precisely: a dev-host reproduction is not a local checkout run, and a merged fix does not prove hosted improvement. If traces are unavailable, state the missing access or coverage and what the run log/browser measurements actually establish.