Basic Agent Tracing

Enable tracing for an agent to automatically capture all agent runs, model calls, and tool executions in your database.

Create a Python file

basic_agent_tracing.py

from agno.agent import Agent
from agno.db.sqlite import SqliteDb
from agno.models.openai import OpenAIResponses
from agno.tools.hackernews import HackerNewsTools
from agno.tracing import setup_tracing

# Set up database for traces
db = SqliteDb(db_file="tmp/traces.db")

# Enable tracing (call once at startup)
setup_tracing(db=db)

# Create agent - automatically traced!
agent = Agent(
    name="HackerNews Agent",
    model=OpenAIResponses(id="gpt-5.2"),
    tools=[HackerNewsTools()],
    instructions="You are a hacker news agent. Answer questions concisely.",
    markdown=True,
    db=db,
)

# Run the agent - traces are captured automatically
agent.print_response("What's trending on HackerNews?")

# Query traces from the database
traces, count = db.get_traces(agent_id=agent.id, limit=10)
print(f"\nFound {count} traces for agent '{agent.name}'")
for trace in traces:
    print(f"  - {trace.name}: {trace.duration_ms}ms ({trace.status})")

Set up your virtual environment

uv venv --python 3.12
source .venv/bin/activate

Install dependencies

uv pip install -U openai agno sqlalchemy opentelemetry-api opentelemetry-sdk openinference-instrumentation-agno

Export your OpenAI API key

export OPENAI_API_KEY="your_openai_api_key_here"

Run the agent

python basic_agent_tracing.py