When a request passes through several agents, understanding what happened requires tracing across them.
Correlation Identifiers
Propagate identifiers — task IDs, context IDs and trace IDs — with every delegation so logs from different agents can be joined.
Distributed Tracing
Standard distributed tracing tools and conventions, such as OpenTelemetry, apply to agent systems. Each delegation becomes a span, showing timing and outcome.
What to Log
- Which agent delegated to which, and why.
- Task states and durations.
- Data shared (or a redacted summary).
- Results and errors.
- Human approvals.
Across Organisations
When agents belong to different organisations, full traces may not be shareable. Agree on the identifiers and minimal information each side keeps, so incidents can be investigated jointly.
Privacy
Redact personal and sensitive data in logs; set retention limits.
Use the Data
Dashboards of delegation volume, latency and failure rates by agent reveal bottlenecks and unreliable partners.