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n. / Tracing basics
Instrumentation
Definition
Instrumentation is the code that records spans, attributes and errors from your application so they can be sent to an observability tool. Without it, nothing is traced.
In more detail
You can instrument manually, by wrapping a step in a span, or automatically, by letting a library patch your model and framework clients. Manual spans give you control over names and attributes; automatic ones give wide coverage quickly. Most teams start automatic and add manual spans around their own business logic.
Example
You wrap your retrieval function in a span called "retrieve-documents" and set the number of results as an attribute. Now every run shows how many documents were found.
