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Overview

Real-time traces are one of Laminar’s most powerful features, allowing you to see spans as they’re being executed without waiting for the top-level span to complete. This provides immediate visibility into trace data during development and debugging processes, which is especially valuable when:
  • Working with long-running operations
  • Debugging complex agent interactions
  • Monitoring multiple chained LLM requests
  • Testing a system in development
Realtime traces

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How It Works

Laminar uses OpenTelemetry for trace collection and processing. By default, it uses BatchSpanProcessor, which buffers and sends traces in batches to optimize performance:
  • Traces are collected and stored temporarily on the client side
  • Data is sent periodically to the Laminar backend
  • There’s a small delay between span completion and dashboard visibility
  • The delay depends on batch configuration (flush interval and batch size)
Real-time traces are currently available only in the Laminar cloud platform.

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Disable Batching (Optional)

For immediate trace visibility, you can disable batching by setting disableBatch to true in the Laminar.initialize function: 
Laminar.initialize({
    // ... other options
    disableBatch: true,
});
This configuration uses SimpleSpanProcessor, which processes and sends traces immediately.

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Performance Considerations

  • Development: Real-time processing provides immediate feedback, beneficial for debugging and development workflows
  • Production: Batch processing is recommended for better performance and resource utilization
While real-time traces provide immediate visibility, disabling batching may impact application performance in production environments.

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Benefits

  1. Immediate Feedback: See traces as they happen, without waiting for operations to complete
  2. Faster Debugging: Identify issues in real-time without waiting for batched processing
  3. Progress Monitoring: Track long-running operations as they execute
  4. Enhanced Development Experience: Test and iterate more quickly with instant visibility