Anthropic Puts OpenTelemetry Export in Beta for the Claude API and Managed Agents, Defaulting to Metadata-Only Spans
Anthropic's October 14 release note launches OpenTelemetry export in beta; its docs say the default content mode omits prompts, destinations are capped at 10 per organization, and delivery is best effort.
Overview
Anthropic’s release notes dated October 14, 2026 say the company has launched OpenTelemetry export in beta, “so you can trace Messages API requests and Claude Managed Agents sessions in your observability backend.” The feature has two parts. According to the same notes, the Claude SDK emits spans in Python, TypeScript, C#, Go, Java, PHP, and Ruby, while spans from the API itself require adding an OpenTelemetry destination in the Claude Console.
What We Know
The OpenTelemetry overview states that “OpenTelemetry export is in beta” and that the API and the SDK use attributes from the GenAI semantic conventions. It lists partner platforms that accept the traces, including Arize AI, Braintrust, Databricks, Datadog, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, Langfuse, LangSmith, New Relic, PostHog, Sentry and Splunk, and says traces can be sent to any observability platform that accepts OTLP.
Two ways to trace. The overview’s comparison table separates SDK tracing from API tracing. SDK tracing covers clients using the SDK and lists cloud platform support as “Any”. API tracing covers any client but lists only Claude Platform and Claude Platform on AWS. The table marks each model run within a request, and Managed Agents turns, as available through API tracing and not through SDK tracing alone.
Setup for API spans. Per the API setup page, adding or changing a destination requires the admin role in a Claude Console organization, and the endpoint must accept protobuf encoding at an HTTPS URL on port 443. Destinations can also be created through the Admin API using the beta header telemetry-destinations-2026-08-11. The page lists these limits: 10 destinations per organization, including disabled ones; 1,000 selected workspaces per destination; and 20 request headers per destination.
Content modes. The overview describes two modes. Metadata only is the default, and its spans include “identifiers, timing, status, token counts, and text that you choose”. Full content adds model prompts and responses. By default, each span holds up to 0.75 MB of content in Full content mode, and when content exceeds the limit, the SDK or the API shortens it and sets anthropic.content.truncated to true. Per the same page, destinations export only metadata for organizations with a HIPAA, FERPA, or K-12 data-handling restriction with Anthropic, while SDK spans are not affected.
Delivery behavior. The API setup page says delivery is “At least once”, so a destination can receive the same span more than once, and also “Best effort”, so a span can be lost before delivery and cannot be sent again. It says the API disables a destination when the endpoint sends a 3xx redirect, when the endpoint’s hostname resolves to an IP address that is not public, or when all deliveries fail for 24 hours. Each delivery times out after 10 seconds in total. The same page says that if the sampled flag in a request’s traceparent header is off, the API does not emit the request’s span or the spans under it.
What We Don’t Know
The documentation reviewed does not say when the feature will leave beta or whether pricing will apply. The overview states that exported spans are not guaranteed to be a complete record of API usage and points to the Usage API for tracking each API key’s usage. It also says Claude Managed Agents is not eligible for zero data retention.
Analysis
For teams already running an OpenTelemetry-compatible backend, the documented setup makes API-side tracing a Console or Admin API step rather than a code change, with the SDK adding client-side spans when installed. Because metadata-only is the default and delivery is best effort, teams that want prompts and responses in their traces must opt in per destination, and the documentation itself advises against treating the exported spans as a complete usage record.