xAI Grok Monitoring & Observability with OpenTelemetry

XAI has released a monitoring and observability integration for its Grok AI model using OpenTelemetry, enabling developers to export traces, logs, and metrics to SigNoz. The setup allows teams to track LLM usage and application performance through unified dashboards with correlated telemetry data. Users can implement the integration via automatic instrumentation with minimal code changes or manual instrumentation for finer control over observability configurations.

Overview This guide walks you through setting up monitoring and observability for xAI Grok using OpenTelemetry https://opentelemetry.io/ and exporting traces, logs, and metrics to SigNoz. With this integration, you can observe various metrics for your xAI Grok applications and llm usage. Monitoring xAI Grok in your AI applications with telemetry ensures full observability across your AI and LLM workflows. 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/ - Internet access to send telemetry data to SigNoz Cloud - Python 3.10+ with xai-sdk installed - For Python: pip installed for managing Python packages - A Grok API key. You can get it from xAi platform https://platform.x.ai/ Monitoring xAI Grok For more information on getting started with Grok in your Python environment, refer to the Grok Python README https://github.com/xai-org/xai-sdk-python . No code auto-instrumentation is recommended for quick setup with minimal code changes. It's ideal when you want to get observability up and running without modifying your application code and are leveraging standard instrumentor libraries. Step 1: Install the necessary packages in your Python environment. pip install \ opentelemetry-distro \ opentelemetry-exporter-otlp \ httpx \ opentelemetry-instrumentation-httpx \ opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics \ xai-sdk Step 2: Add Automatic Instrumentation opentelemetry-bootstrap --action=install Step 3: Create an example xAI Grok application python import os from xai sdk import Client from xai sdk.chat import user, system client = Client api key=os.getenv "XAI API KEY" , timeout=3600, Override default timeout with longer timeout for reasoning models chat = client.chat.create model="grok-4" chat.append system "You are Grok, a highly intelligent, helpful AI assistant." chat.append user "What is SigNoz" response = chat.sample print response.content Before running this code, ensure that you have set the environment variable XAI API KEY with your generated Grok API key. Step 4: Run your application with auto-instrumentation Run your application with the following environment variables set. This configures OpenTelemetry to export traces, logs, and metrics to SigNoz Cloud and enables automatic log correlation: OTEL RESOURCE ATTRIBUTES="service.name=<service name " \ OTEL EXPORTER OTLP ENDPOINT="https://ingest.<region .signoz.cloud:443" \ OTEL EXPORTER OTLP HEADERS="signoz-ingestion-key=<your-ingestion-key " \ OTEL EXPORTER OTLP PROTOCOL=grpc \ OTEL TRACES EXPORTER=otlp \ OTEL METRICS EXPORTER=otlp \ OTEL LOGS EXPORTER=otlp \ OTEL PYTHON LOG CORRELATION=true \ OTEL PYTHON LOGGING AUTO INSTRUMENTATION ENABLED=true \ opentelemetry-instrument <your run command is 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/ - Replace <your run command with the actual command you would use to run your application. In this case we would use: python main.py 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 . Code-based manual instrumentation gives you fine-grained control over your telemetry configuration. Use this approach when you need to customize resource attributes, sampling strategies, or integrate with existing observability infrastructure. Step 1: Install additional OpenTelemetry dependencies pip install \ opentelemetry-api \ opentelemetry-sdk \ opentelemetry-exporter-otlp \ opentelemetry-instrumentation-httpx \ opentelemetry-instrumentation-system-metrics \ xai-sdk Step 2: Import the necessary modules in your Python application Traces: python from opentelemetry import trace from opentelemetry.sdk.resources import Resource from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http.trace exporter import OTLPSpanExporter Metrics: python from opentelemetry.sdk.metrics import MeterProvider from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http.metric exporter import OTLPMetricExporter from opentelemetry.sdk.metrics.export import PeriodicExportingMetricReader from opentelemetry import metrics from opentelemetry.instrumentation.system metrics import SystemMetricsInstrumentor from opentelemetry.instrumentation.httpx import HTTPXClientInstrumentor Step 3: Set up Traces python from opentelemetry.sdk.resources import Resource from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http.trace exporter import OTLPSpanExporter from opentelemetry import trace import os resource = Resource.create {"service.name": "<service name "} provider = TracerProvider resource=resource span exporter = OTLPSpanExporter endpoint= os.getenv "OTEL EXPORTER TRACES ENDPOINT" , headers={"signoz-ingestion-key": os.getenv "SIGNOZ INGESTION KEY" }, processor = BatchSpanProcessor span exporter provider.add span processor processor trace.set tracer provider provider is the name of your service <service name → SigNoz Cloud trace endpoint with appropriate OTEL EXPORTER TRACES ENDPOINT region https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/signoz-cloud/overview/ endpoint : https://ingest.<region .signoz.cloud:443/v1/traces → Your SigNoz SIGNOZ INGESTION KEY 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 4: Set up Metrics python from opentelemetry.sdk.resources import Resource from opentelemetry.sdk.metrics import MeterProvider from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.http.metric exporter import OTLPMetricExporter from opentelemetry.sdk.metrics.export import PeriodicExportingMetricReader from opentelemetry import metrics from opentelemetry.instrumentation.system metrics import SystemMetricsInstrumentor import os resource = Resource.create {"service.name": "<service-name "} metric exporter = OTLPMetricExporter endpoint= os.getenv "OTEL EXPORTER METRICS ENDPOINT" , headers={"signoz-ingestion-key": os.getenv "SIGNOZ INGESTION KEY" }, reader = PeriodicExportingMetricReader metric exporter metric provider = MeterProvider metric readers= reader , resource=resource metrics.set meter provider metric provider meter = metrics.get meter name turn on out-of-the-box metrics SystemMetricsInstrumentor .instrument HTTPXClientInstrumentor .instrument is the name of your service <service name → SigNoz Cloud endpoint with appropriate OTEL EXPORTER METRICS ENDPOINT region https://signoz.io/docs/ingestion/signoz-cloud/overview/ endpoint : https://ingest.<region .signoz.cloud:443/v1/metrics → Your SigNoz SIGNOZ INGESTION KEY 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 . SystemMetricsInstrumentor provides system metrics CPU, memory, etc. , and HTTPXClientInstrumentor provides outbound HTTP request metrics such as request duration. If you want to add custom metrics to your Grok application, see Python Custom Metrics https://signoz.io/opentelemetry/python-custom-metrics/ . Step 5: Run an example Grok application Ensure you have completed the steps above traces, logs, and metrics configuration before running this code. All OpenTelemetry instrumentation must be initialized first. python import os from xai sdk import Client from xai sdk.chat import user, system your telemetry configurations here client = Client api key=os.getenv "XAI API KEY" , timeout=3600, Override default timeout with longer timeout for reasoning models chat = client.chat.create model="grok-4" chat.append system "You are Grok, a highly intelligent, helpful AI assistant." chat.append user "What is SigNoz" response = chat.sample print response.content Before running this code, ensure that you have set the environment variable XAI API KEY with your generated Grok API key. View Traces, Logs, and Metrics in SigNoz Your Grok agent usage should now automatically emit traces and metrics. The Grok xAI SDK does not auto-emit logs. Any logs you want to see must be explicitly exported. For more information on exporting logs, refer to Python Logs https://signoz.io/docs/logs-management/send-logs/python-logs/ . 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: You should be able to see Grok 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 Grok dashboard here https://signoz.io/docs/dashboards/dashboard-templates/grok-dashboard/ which provides specialized visualizations for monitoring your Grok usage in applications. The dashboard includes pre-built charts specifically tailored for LLM usage, along with import instructions to get started quickly. Setup OpenTelemetry Collector Optional Setup OpenTelemetry Collector Optional setup-opentelemetry-collector-optional What is the OpenTelemetry Collector? Think of the OTel Collector as a middleman between your app and SigNoz. Instead of your application sending data directly to SigNoz, it sends everything to the Collector first, which then forwards it along. Why use it? Cleaning up data — Filter out noisy traces you don't care about, or remove sensitive info before it leaves your servers. Keeping your app lightweight — Let the Collector handle batching, retries, and compression instead of your application code. Adding context automatically — The Collector can tag your data with useful info like which Kubernetes pod or cloud region it came from. Future flexibility — Want to send data to multiple backends later? The Collector makes that easy without changing your app. See Switch from direct export to Collector https://signoz.io/docs/opentelemetry-collection-agents/opentelemetry-collector/switch-to-collector/ for step-by-step instructions to convert your setup. For more details, see Why use the OpenTelemetry Collector? https://signoz.io/docs/opentelemetry-collection-agents/opentelemetry-collector/why-to-use-collector/ and the Collector configuration guide https://signoz.io/docs/opentelemetry-collection-agents/opentelemetry-collector/configuration/ . 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/