Observability on Board

Episode 09traces

OpenRouter can trace every call

OpenRouter can broadcast a trace of every LLM call to any OpenTelemetry backend. One destination in your workspace settings turns it on.

Ship telemetry toUse an OTLP endpoint you already have, from another vendor or your platform team. This one needs a one-time setup step: save your endpoint and the episodes fill it in.Set your endpointRun an OpenTelemetry Collector on your machine and watch telemetry arrive in its terminal. No account needed.More detailsShip straight to Bronto. You need an account and an API key with ingest permission.More details

Switch it on

OpenRouter’s observability is configured in its web UI. The steps below match the UI as of the verified date; for the current version, see OpenRouter’s documentation.

  1. Open the OpenRouter settings and pick your workspace, or stay on Default Workspace.
  2. Click Observability in the sidebar.
  3. Turn Broadcast on.
  4. Scroll down to OpenTelemetry Collector and click Add Destination.
  5. Fill in Endpoint and Headers with the values below.
  6. Under Additional generation metadata, tick Cost and Request context. Both are off by default, and Request context carries the routing data.
  7. Click Add.

Endpoint:

https://ingestion.eu.bronto.io/v1/traces

Headers:

{"x-bronto-api-key": "$BRONTO_API_KEY"}

Endpoint:

https://otel.your-company.com/v1/traces

OpenRouter sends from its own servers, so the Collector needs a public HTTPS address. The Local Collector setup shows the Collector side.

This uses the endpoint and auth header you saved in the setup guide.

Endpoint:

YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT/v1/traces

Headers:

{"YOUR_AUTH_HEADER": "YOUR_AUTH_VALUE"}