Observing ADK Agents: OpenTelemetry Tracing with Jaeger
· 7 min read
You build an AI agent with Google ADK. It works. But when you ask "Why did the agent choose that tool?" or "Which LLM call took 5 seconds?" – you're flying blind.
Enter distributed tracing: Jaeger visualizes every step your agent takes, from reasoning to tool execution to LLM calls. ADK has built-in OpenTelemetry support, making this a breeze... once you understand one crucial gotcha.
This post shows you the complete picture: what to do, why it matters, and the one thing that trips up most developers.

