Claude Agent SDK Monitoring & Observability with OpenTelemetry

SigNoz has released a guide for monitoring Claude Agent SDK applications using OpenTelemetry, enabling developers to export logs, traces, and metrics for real-time visibility into latency, error rates, and usage trends. The integration requires a SigNoz account, Python 3.10+, and an Anthropic API key, with setup involving environment variable configuration and code instrumentation to automatically emit telemetry data to SigNoz dashboards.

Overview This guide walks you through setting up monitoring and observability for Claude Agent SDK using OpenTelemetry https://opentelemetry.io/ and exporting logs, traces, and metrics to SigNoz. With this integration, you can observe the performance of various models, capture request/response details, and track system-level metrics in SigNoz, giving you real-time visibility into latency, error rates, and usage trends for your Claude Code SDK applications. Instrumenting Claude Agent SDK in your AI applications with telemetry ensures full observability across your agent workflows, making it easier to debug issues, optimize performance, and understand user interactions. By leveraging SigNoz, you can analyze correlated traces, logs, and metrics in unified dashboards, configure alerts, and gain actionable insights to continuously improve reliability, responsiveness, and user experience. Prerequisites - A SigNoz Cloud account https://signoz.io/teams/ with an active ingestion key or Self Hosted SigNoz instance https://signoz.io/docs/install/self-host/ - Python 3.10+ with claude-agent-sdk installed - For Python: pip installed for managing Python packages - An Anthropic https://docs.anthropic.com/en/home API account with a working API Key Monitoring Claude Agent SDK For more information on monitoring Claude Agent SDK with OpenTelemetry, refer to the official Claude Agent SDK observability documentation https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/observability . Step 1: Install the necessary packages in your Python environment. pip install claude-agent-sdk Step 2: Configure OpenTelemetry environment variables export CLAUDE CODE ENABLE TELEMETRY=1 export CLAUDE CODE ENHANCED TELEMETRY BETA=1 export OTEL SERVICE NAME=<service name export OTEL TRACES EXPORTER=otlp export OTEL METRICS EXPORTER=otlp export OTEL LOGS EXPORTER=otlp export OTEL EXPORTER OTLP PROTOCOL="http/protobuf" export OTEL EXPORTER OTLP ENDPOINT=https://ingest.<region .signoz.cloud:443 export OTEL EXPORTER OTLP HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<your-ingestion-key : The name of your service <service name <region : Your SigNoz Cloud region https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/signoz-cloud/overview/ endpoint <your-ingestion-key : Your SigNoz ingestion key https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/signoz-cloud/keys/ Using self-hosted SigNoz? Most steps are identical. To adapt this guide, update the endpoint and remove the ingestion key header as shown in Cloud → Self-Hosted https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/cloud-vs-self-hosted/ cloud-to-self-hosted . Step 3: Create an example Claude Agent SDK workflow python import asyncio from claude agent sdk import query async def main : async for message in query prompt="List the files in this directory" : print message asyncio.run main 📌 Note: Before running this code, ensure that you have set the environment variable ANTHROPIC API KEY with your generated API key. Step 4: Run your application In this case: python main.py View Traces, Logs, and Metrics in SigNoz Your Claude Agent SDK usage should now automatically emit traces, logs, and metrics. You should be able to view traces in Signoz Cloud under the traces tab: When you click on a trace in SigNoz, you'll see a detailed view of the trace, including all associated spans, along with their events and attributes. You should be able to view logs in Signoz Cloud under the logs tab. You can also view logs by clicking on the “Related Logs” button in the trace view to see correlated logs: When you click on any of these logs in SigNoz, you'll see a detailed view of the log, including attributes: You should be able to see Claude Agent SDK related metrics in Signoz Cloud under the metrics tab: When you click on any of these metrics in SigNoz, you'll see a detailed view of the metric, including attributes: Troubleshooting Troubleshooting troubleshooting If you don't see your telemetry data: Verify network connectivity - Ensure your application can reach SigNoz Cloud endpoints Check ingestion key - Verify your SigNoz ingestion key is correct Wait for data - OpenTelemetry batches data before sending, so wait 10-30 seconds after making API calls Try a console exporter — Enable a console exporter locally to confirm that your application is generating telemetry data before it’s sent to SigNoz Next Steps You can also check out our custom Claude Agent SDK dashboard here https://signoz.io/docs/dashboards/dashboard-templates/claude-agent-sdk-dashboard/ which provides specialized visualizations for monitoring your Claude Agent SDK usage in applications. The dashboard includes pre-built charts specifically tailored for LLM usage, along with import instructions to get started quickly. Additional resources: - Set up alerts https://signoz.io/docs/alerts/ for high latency or error rates - Learn more about querying traces https://signoz.io/docs/userguide/traces/ - Explore log correlation https://signoz.io/docs/userguide/logs query builder/