ADK Observability Guide

ADK Observability Guide

Cloud Trace works out of the box — no infrastructure needed. Prompt-response logging and BigQuery Agent Analytics require Terraform-provisioned infrastructure (service account, GCS bucket, BigQuery dataset). Run agents-cli infra single-project --project PROJECT_ID to provision these resources. See references/​cloud-trace-and-logging.md for details, env vars, and verification commands. If your project isn't scaffolded yet, see /​google-agents-cli-scaffold first.

Order of operations for agent_runtime deployments

For deployment_target = agent_runtime, run agents-cli infra single-project before the first agents-cli deploy. The Terraform module owns the entire Reasoning Engine resource (display_name, service account, deployment spec, env vars), so applying it after a SDK-based deploy creates a state mismatch — Terraform has no record of the SDK-deployed instance and cannot layer env vars onto it without taking ownership of the whole resource.

If you have already run agents-cli deploy, you have two options:

1. Switch to Terraform-managed. Delete the SDK-deployed Reasoning Engine, then run agents-cli infra single-project followed by agents-cli deploy. Sessions and any in-flight state on the previous instance are lost.
2. Keep the SDK-deployed instance. Skip infra single-project and set the observability env vars on the running instance directly via the vertexai client update API. You will also need to grant the instance's service account the IAM permissions required to emit telemetry — writing to the logs GCS bucket, BigQuery dataset access, log writer, etc. See deployment/​terraform/​single-project/​iam.tf and telemetry.tf in your scaffolded project for the full set of bindings the Terraform module would otherwise provision. Terraform-managed env vars are not available in this mode.

Reference Files

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Observability Tiers

Choose the right level of observability based on your needs:

Ask the user which tier(s) they need — they can be combined. Cloud Trace is always on; the others are additive.

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Cloud Trace

ADK uses OpenTelemetry to emit distributed traces. Every agent invocation produces spans that track the full execution flow.

Span Hierarchy

invocation
  └── agent_run (one per agent in the chain)
        ├── call_llm (model request/​response)
        └── execute_tool (tool execution)

Setup by Deployment Type

View traces: Cloud Console → Trace → Trace explorer

For detailed setup instructions (Agent Runtime CLI/​SDK, Cloud Run, custom deployments), fetch https://adk.dev/​integrations/​cloud-trace/​index.md.

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Prompt-Response Logging

Captures GenAI interactions (model name, tokens, timing) and exports to GCS (JSONL) and BigQuery (via direct log sinks and external tables). Privacy-preserving by default — only metadata is logged unless explicitly configured otherwise.

Key env var: OTEL_INSTRUMENTATION_GENAI_CAPTURE_MESSAGE_CONTENT — OTel GenAI semantic-conventions standard (modes: span_only, event_only, span_and_event, no_content). The scaffolded setup_telemetry() collapses every non-false value to NO_CONTENT (metadata-only); false disables capture. Logging is disabled locally unless LOGS_BUCKET_NAME is set.

For scaffolded project details (Terraform resources, env vars, privacy modes, enabling/​disabling, verification commands), see references/​cloud-trace-and-logging.md.

For ADK logging docs (log levels, configuration, debugging), fetch https://adk.dev/​observability/​logging/​index.md.

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BigQuery Agent Analytics Plugin

Optional plugin that logs structured agent events to BigQuery. Enable with --bq-analytics at scaffold time. See references/​bigquery-agent-analytics.md for details.

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Third-Party Integrations

ADK supports several third-party observability platforms. Each uses OpenTelemetry or custom instrumentation to capture agent behavior.

Ask the user which platform they prefer — present the trade-offs and let them choose. For setup details, fetch the relevant ADK docs page from the Deep Dive table below.

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Troubleshooting

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Deep Dive: ADK Docs (WebFetch URLs)

For detailed documentation beyond what this skill covers, fetch these pages:

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Related Skills

• /​google-agents-cli-deploy — Deployment targets, CI/​CD pipelines, and production workflows
• /​google-agents-cli-workflow — Development workflow, coding guidelines, and operational rules
• /​google-agents-cli-adk-code — ADK Python API quick reference for writing agent code