Overview
Observability in Arcane is where you search, inspect, and replay your trace data. You work with traces (and the events inside them) and conversations—stitched sessions that show the full user journey.
What it is
Arcane connects to your trace backends (Tempo, Jaeger, ClickHouse, or Custom API) and lets you:
- Search traces by time range, datasource, and attributes, then open any trace to see its span tree, attributes, and events.
- View events attached to spans—either per span in the trace viewer or in a single chronological list for the whole trace.
- Search conversations by conversation stitching configuration and time range, then open a conversation to see the full chat replay and its constituent traces.
All of this uses standard OpenTelemetry-style data. If you're new to traces, spans, and conversations, see Core Observability Concepts.
What you can do
| Area | What you do |
|---|---|
| Traces | Search traces, open a trace to see the span tree (Graph / Viewer), conversation reconstruction, and events. Use Dataset Mode to map attributes into datasets. Add traces to annotation queues. |
| Events | In the trace detail view, see OTLP events per span or in one timeline for the whole trace. Filter by span, service, entity, or event field. Click an event to jump to its span. |
| Conversations | Search by configuration and time range, open a conversation to see the stitched chat thread, the list of traces, or the merged trace view. Add conversations to annotation queues. |
Getting started
- Configure a datasource (Organisation Configuration → Datasources) so Arcane can read your traces.
- Configure entities (Organisation Configuration → Entities) so spans show friendly labels and message reconstruction works.
- For conversations, set up a conversation stitching configuration (Organisation Configuration → Conversation) with the span attributes that identify a session (e.g.
gen_ai.conversation.id). - Go to Traces or Conversations in the sidebar, pick your datasource and time range, and run a search.
Pages in this section
- Traces — Search traces, open trace detail (Graph, Viewer, Conversation, Events), Dataset Mode, and annotate.
- Events — How events appear in the trace UI (per-span and trace-wide timeline).
- Conversations — Search conversations, view the stitched conversation, trace list, and merged trace.
Related
- Core Observability Concepts — Traces, spans, conversations, and events.
- Datasources — Connecting trace backends.
- Entities — Matching and message reconstruction.
- Annotations & Queues — Queues and questions for traces and conversations.