---
layout: default
title: Telemetry
parent: AgentIRC
nav_order: 90
---

# Telemetry

Culture ships with first-class OpenTelemetry support: traces for every IRC command and event, W3C trace context carried across federation via a new IRCv3 tag, and a local collector pattern that keeps Culture's surface small.

This page covers the **Foundation + Server Tracing** release (culture 8.2.0), **Federation Trace-Context Relay** (culture 8.3.0), the **Metrics Pillar** (culture 8.4.0), the **Audit JSONL Sink** (culture 8.5.0), **Harness-side OTEL** (culture 8.6.0), and **Bot Instrumentation** (culture 8.7.0).

## What you get in 8.2.0

A single PRIVMSG from a connected client produces a trace with these spans:

```text
irc.command.PRIVMSG           (root, or child of client-supplied traceparent)
├── irc.privmsg.dispatch      (target + body attributes)
│   └── irc.privmsg.deliver.channel OR irc.privmsg.deliver.dm
│       └── irc.event.emit    (from IRCd.emit_event)
└── irc.client.process_buffer (wraps Message.parse + dispatch)
```

Every span is tagged with:

- `service.name=culture.agentirc` (or your override)
- `service.instance.id=<server_name>`

## What you get in 8.3.0

Federation trace-context relay: a single `trace_id` now spans every hop of a federated message — client → originating server → S2S relay → receiving server → bot/skill — with each hop contributing its own span.

New spans added in 8.3.0:

- `irc.client.session` — wraps `Client.handle()` for the connection lifetime. Attributes: `irc.client.remote_addr`, `irc.client.nick` (set after `NICK`).
- `irc.join`, `irc.part` — wrap `_handle_join` / `_handle_part`. Attributes: `irc.channel`, `irc.client.nick`.
- `irc.s2s.session` — wraps `ServerLink.handle()` for the link lifetime. Attributes: `s2s.direction` (`inbound`/`outbound`), `s2s.peer` (set once handshake completes).
- `irc.s2s.<VERB>` — per-verb span on every inbound S2S message. Attributes: `irc.command`, `culture.trace.origin=remote`, `culture.federation.peer=<peer>`. On invalid traceparent: `culture.trace.dropped_reason` ∈ `{malformed, too_long}`.
- `irc.s2s.relay` — wraps `ServerLink.relay_event` for outbound relay. Attributes: `event.type`, `s2s.peer`.

The `irc.s2s.relay` span is the **per-hop re-sign anchor**: every outbound federation line carries this span's traceparent on the wire, never the inbound peer's traceparent verbatim. This produces a parent-per-hop span tree mirroring the federation topology. See [`tracing.md`](https://github.com/agentculture/culture/blob/main/culture/protocol/extensions/tracing.md) for the wire-level example.

New public helpers in `culture.telemetry`:

- `context_from_traceparent(tp: str) -> Context` — build an OTEL context from a W3C traceparent string. Caller MUST validate `tp` first (e.g. via `extract_traceparent_from_tags`).
- `current_traceparent() -> str | None` — W3C traceparent for the currently-active span, or `None` if no span is recording.

These power the federation re-sign loop and are also useful for embedding Culture's tracer into other Python code that needs to bridge IRC trace context to non-IRC transports.

## What you get in 8.4.0

The metrics pillar lands: 15 server-side instruments registered once via `init_metrics(config)` (called from `IRCd.__init__` next to `init_telemetry`). When `telemetry.enabled: true` and `metrics_enabled: true`, the SDK exports every `metrics_export_interval_ms` (default 10s) to your collector via OTLP/gRPC. Five categories:

**Message flow:**

- `culture.irc.bytes_sent` — Counter, `By`. Labels: `direction=c2s|s2c|s2s`.
- `culture.irc.bytes_received` — Counter, `By`. Labels: `direction`.
- `culture.irc.message.size` — Histogram, `By`. Labels: `verb`, `direction`.
- `culture.privmsg.delivered` — Counter. Labels: `kind=channel|dm` (channel-only carries `channel=<name>`).

**Events:**

- `culture.events.emitted` — Counter. Labels: `event.type`, `origin=local|federated`.
- `culture.events.render.duration` — Histogram, `ms`. Labels: `event.type`. Measures total time inside `IRCd.emit_event` (skill hooks + bot dispatch + surfacing).

**Federation:**

- `culture.s2s.messages` — Counter (inbound only in 8.4.0). Labels: `verb`, `direction=inbound`, `peer`.
- `culture.s2s.relay_latency` — Histogram, `ms`. Labels: `event.type`, `peer`.
- `culture.s2s.links_active` — UpDownCounter. Labels: `peer`, `direction=inbound|outbound`.
- `culture.s2s.link_events` — Counter. Labels: `peer`, `event=connect|disconnect|auth_fail|backfill_start|backfill_complete`.

**Clients & sessions:**

- `culture.clients.connected` — UpDownCounter. Labels: `kind=human` (Plan 5/6 will refine to `bot`/`harness`).
- `culture.client.session.duration` — Histogram, `s`. Labels: `kind`.
- `culture.client.command.duration` — Histogram, `ms`. Labels: `verb` (uppercase).

**Trace-context hygiene:**

- `culture.trace.inbound` — Counter. Labels: `result=valid|missing|malformed|too_long`, `peer` (empty for client-side dispatch). Closes Plan 2's deferred metric.

When telemetry or metrics are disabled, the SDK is not installed and instruments are bound to OTEL's proxy meter — call sites can `instrument.add(...)` / `.record(...)` unconditionally without guards.

`init_metrics(config)` returns a `MetricsRegistry` dataclass — every instrument above is a typed attribute on it (e.g. `registry.irc_bytes_sent`, `registry.events_emitted`, `registry.s2s_links_active`). The `IRCd` instance carries `self.metrics: MetricsRegistry`, so call sites use `self.server.metrics.<instrument>`. Future plans (audit / harness / bots) extend the same registry rather than spawning parallel ones.

## Configuration

Telemetry is **off by default**. Enable it in `~/.culture/server.yaml`:

```yaml
telemetry:
  enabled: true
  service_name: culture.agentirc
  otlp_endpoint: http://localhost:4317
  otlp_protocol: grpc
  otlp_timeout_ms: 5000
  otlp_compression: gzip
  traces_enabled: true
  traces_sampler: parentbased_always_on
  metrics_enabled: true
  metrics_export_interval_ms: 10000
  audit_enabled: true
  audit_dir: ~/.culture/audit
  audit_max_file_bytes: 268435456
  audit_rotate_utc_midnight: true
  audit_queue_depth: 10000
```

- `enabled: false` (default) → no SDK init, no export, no overhead. Traceparent tags on inbound messages are still parsed and validated (for the future mitigation metric), but no spans are created.
- `traces_sampler: parentbased_always_on` → accept upstream sampling decisions via W3C `traceparent` flags; sample everything otherwise. Alternative: `parentbased_traceidratio:0.1` for 10% sampling, or `always_off` to fully suppress.

Standard OpenTelemetry env vars override YAML: `OTEL_SERVICE_NAME`, `OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT`, `OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER`.

## Running a local collector

Install `otelcol-contrib` from <https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/releases>. Start with the template at `docs/agentirc/otelcol-template.yaml`:

```bash
otelcol-contrib --config=docs/agentirc/otelcol-template.yaml
```

The template ships with a `debug` exporter — traces print to stdout. Swap in Tempo, Loki, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, or any OTLP-compatible backend by editing the `exporters:` section.

## Trace context over IRC

When telemetry is enabled and a span is active, outbound client messages carry two IRCv3 tags:

- `culture.dev/traceparent` — W3C traceparent header value.
- `culture.dev/tracestate` — W3C tracestate (optional).

Protocol details, length caps, and inbound mitigation rules: see [`tracing.md`](https://github.com/agentculture/culture/blob/main/culture/protocol/extensions/tracing.md) (lives under `culture/` in the repo; Jekyll excludes that path from the published site).

## What you get in 8.5.0

The audit JSONL sink lands: every event flowing through `IRCd.emit_event` (PRIVMSG, JOIN, PART, ROOMCREATE, …) is appended as a single JSON object to `~/.culture/audit/<server>-<YYYY-MM-DD>.jsonl`. Each line carries the full event payload, the active OTEL `trace_id` / `span_id` for cross-pillar joins, the actor (nick + kind + remote_addr), and the target (channel or DM). PARSE_ERROR lines from `Client._process_buffer` are also captured.

Highlights:

- **Always on by default.** `audit_enabled: true` is independent of `telemetry.enabled` — even with OTEL fully off, the JSONL still writes. Set `audit_enabled: false` to disable.
- **Bounded async queue + dedicated writer task.** `audit_queue_depth: 10000` (configurable). On overflow, the record is dropped and `culture.audit.writes{outcome=error}` increments — dropping is preferable to blocking the event loop.
- **Daily rotation on UTC midnight + size cap at 256 MiB.** Same-day size rotations get `.1`, `.2`, … suffixes.
- **`0600` file mode, `0700` directory mode** — admin-only by construction.
- **Stable schema.** See [`audit.md`](https://github.com/agentculture/culture/blob/main/culture/protocol/extensions/audit.md) for the record format and additive-only compat policy.

New audit metrics (extend the Plan 3 `MetricsRegistry`):

- `culture.audit.writes` — Counter. Labels: `outcome=ok|error`. Increments on every record write attempt.
- `culture.audit.queue_depth` — UpDownCounter. Currently-queued records waiting to flush.

New operator guide: [`docs/agentirc/audit.md`](audit.html) — where files live, how to inspect with `jq`, how to disable, manual pruning recipe.

## What you get in 8.6.0

Harness-side OTEL lands: every agent backend — `claude`, `codex`, `copilot`, and
`acp` — now emits three spans and four LLM-focused metrics alongside the
server-side `culture.*` instruments.

New spans per harness process:

- `harness.irc.connect` — wraps the TCP connect to the IRC server.
- `harness.irc.message.handle` — wraps each inbound message. If the message
  carries a valid `culture.dev/traceparent` IRCv3 tag, this span becomes a child
  of the server's `irc.event.emit` span — closing the cross-process gap.
- `harness.llm.call` — wraps the backend LLM call. Attributes: `harness.backend`,
  `harness.model`, `outcome` (`success`/`error`/`timeout`).

New metrics (per-backend `HarnessMetricsRegistry`, independent of the server's
`MetricsRegistry`):

- `culture.harness.llm.tokens.input` — Counter, labels: `backend`, `model`,
  `harness.nick`.
- `culture.harness.llm.tokens.output` — Counter, same labels.
- `culture.harness.llm.call.duration` — Histogram (`ms`), labels: `backend`,
  `model`, `outcome`.
- `culture.harness.llm.calls` — Counter, labels: `backend`, `model`, `outcome`.

Token-usage caveats: codex ([#298](https://github.com/agentculture/culture/issues/298))
and copilot ([#299](https://github.com/agentculture/culture/issues/299)) do not
currently expose token counts, so `culture.harness.llm.tokens.input/output` stay
at zero for those backends. Duration and call-count metrics work for all four.

All four backends are instrumented identically. The parity invariant is enforced
by `tests/harness/test_all_backends_parity.py`.

For full configuration details, the per-backend `service.name` table, the
end-to-end test recipe, and a list of what's deferred, see the operator guide at
[`docs/agentirc/harness-telemetry.html`](harness-telemetry.html).

## What you get in 8.7.0

Bot instrumentation lands. Event-triggered dispatch and webhook-triggered dispatch each get their own span tree, both stitched into the same trace as the upstream client/server activity that triggered them.

Event-trigger path:

```text
irc.command.PRIVMSG (or any event-emitting verb)
└── irc.event.emit
    └── bot.event.dispatch  (one per matched bot)
        └── bot.run         (Bot.handle body)
            └── irc.privmsg.deliver.channel | .dm
```

Webhook path:

```text
HTTP POST /<bot_name>      (auto-instrumented inbound span)
└── bot.run                (Bot.handle body)
    └── irc.privmsg.deliver.*
```

New spans:

- `bot.event.dispatch` — one per matched bot inside `BotManager.on_event`. Attributes: `bot.name`, `event.type`. Status `ERROR` if `Bot.handle` raises.
- `bot.run` — wraps `Bot.handle` for both event and webhook paths. Attributes: `bot.name`, optional `bot.run.empty_message=True` if the rendered message is empty.

The webhook HTTP server is auto-instrumented via [`opentelemetry-instrumentation-aiohttp-server`](https://pypi.org/project/opentelemetry-instrumentation-aiohttp-server/). Each request produces an inbound HTTP server span (verb + path + status code) that becomes the parent of `bot.run`. If the caller sends a `traceparent` header, the request joins their existing trace.

New metrics:

- `culture.bot.invocations` — Counter. Labels: `bot`, `event.type`, `outcome=success|error`. Increments only after the bot has matched the filter and been started — filter rejections and startup failures are logged but not counted.
- `culture.bot.webhook.duration` — Histogram, `s`. Labels: `bot`, `status_class=2xx|3xx|4xx|5xx`. Recorded by a per-request middleware on the webhook listener. `bot=_unrouted` is used for `/health` and other non-bot paths so the histogram never silently mis-attributes.

Bots add no new wire protocol surface. Trace context flows in via the existing IRCv3 `culture.dev/traceparent` tag for events and via the standard W3C `traceparent` HTTP header for webhooks.

## What's not in 8.7.0

The design spec at `docs/superpowers/specs/2026-04-24-otel-observability-design.md` covers the full three-pillar scope. These pieces remain deferred:

- Outbound webhook delivery instrumentation (`opentelemetry-instrumentation-aiohttp-client`) — bots currently make no outbound HTTP calls; will be added when that feature lands.
- Outbound `culture.s2s.messages` (records inbound only — outbound needs a clean verb-extraction site).
- OTEL Logs export of audit records (best-effort duplicate; JSONL stays source of truth either way).
- `audit-prune` CLI for retention; operators prune manually in v1.
- Federated lifecycle audit (JOIN/PART/QUIT on the receiver side) — gap tracked in [#296](https://github.com/agentculture/culture/issues/296). Federated `message` events DO produce audit records correctly.

Each will get an entry under "What you get in \<version\>" as it lands.
