LLM applications need three distinct observability planes: prompt and response traces for debugging hallucinations, per-token and per-feature cost tracking, and response quality evaluation. Mature tools like Langfuse, LangSmith, and Helicone cover all three planes with specific instrumentation.
OpenTelemetry is the CNCF project, graduated in May 2026, that unifies logs, metrics, and traces under one SDK and the OTLP protocol, without locking you into a single backend. Traces have been stable since 2021 and metrics since 2023; logs are still maturing, but already worth adopting on new projects.
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