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Alpic can push a distributed trace for every MCP request your server handles to any OpenTelemetry-compatible backend over OTLP/HTTP: Datadog, Grafana Cloud, Honeycomb, or your own collector. There is nothing to install and no change to your code or deploys. Configure a destination once and spans start arriving within seconds.
Traces export is available on paid plans. Destinations are configured per environment and per signal, so traces can go to Honeycomb while logs go elsewhere, and staging and production can point at different backends.

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Set up a destination

1

Open the Telemetry settings

In your project Settings, open the Telemetry section, pick the environment to configure, and add a destination under Traces.
2

Enter the destination endpoint

Paste the full traces URL from your vendor, signal path included, for example https://otlp.example.com/v1/traces.We push to this URL exactly as you enter it and never append a path. /v1/traces is only the OTLP default: some vendors serve a different path, or a different host per signal, so always copy the URL your vendor documents for traces.You can add more than one destination with Add destination, and the same spans go to all of them. Each destination is configured, tested and stopped on its own.
3

Pick the protocol

HTTP/protobuf is the OTLP default. Switch to HTTP/JSON only if your backend asks for it.
4

Add the authentication header

Authentication is a header you copy from your vendor, such as Authorization or DD-API-KEY, with your API key as the value. Mark it secret so it is stored write-only and never shown again.
5

Save and send a test trace

Save the destination, then click Send a test trace. Alpic serializes and delivers a synthetic trace through the same protocol, headers and format as your real spans. A passing test proves your endpoint, credentials and protocol choice; real request spans appear once traffic flows. The verification outcomes are the same as for logs export.

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The span hierarchy

Each MCP request becomes one trace:
  • mcp.<method>: the root span covers the whole request as the client experienced it, from the moment it reached Alpic to the response. Its name is the stable dot-form of the MCP method (mcp.tools.call, mcp.initialize, mcp.ping). Its status carries the request outcome; failed requests are marked as errors with error.type and, for JSON-RPC errors, rpc.jsonrpc.error_code.
  • alpic.server.startup: present only on the request that paid for your server process to start: process spawn, port readiness and the initial MCP handshake.
  • alpic.server.execution: the round-trip through your handler. Everything your own code did nests here. It appears when your server reports its execution span for the request; a ping answered by Alpic, or a request whose reported spans did not arrive, exports the root span alone.
  • Your own instrumentation: events captured with the insights SDK become children of the execution span: an event with a duration becomes a child span named after your event, one without becomes a span event. Your error flag maps to the span status.
  • Outbound HTTP calls: completed calls your handler made become CLIENT children of the execution span (see coverage below).
Dynamic values stay in attributes, never in span names, so your backend’s grouping stays useful: a tool call is always named mcp.tools.call and carries mcp.method.name = "tools/call" and gen_ai.tool.name = "weather_forecast". Root spans also carry the session (mcp.session.id), conversation (gen_ai.conversation.id), resolved user (enduser.id), client name (alpic.mcp.client.name) and output token estimate (gen_ai.usage.output_tokens) when known. The resource’s service.name is the environment id, as for logs and metrics. The gaps are meaningful: Lambda cold start and Alpic’s own proxying overhead remain uncovered stretches inside the root rather than appearing as customer-owned spans. Time not covered by alpic.server.startup or alpic.server.execution is time your code did not spend.

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Outbound HTTP call coverage

Outbound auto-instrumentation covers Node servers using Streamable HTTP first; other runtimes and transports export the same request waterfall without outbound children. Capture observes Node’s diagnostics_channel, so it never patches your HTTP clients, and covers fetch, Undici, node:http/node:https and clients built on them such as Axios. A call becomes a child span only once its full response body has completed or the call failed; calls still open when your handler returns produce no child. Each child carries the method, a sanitized URL (scheme, host and path only) and the status code or a low-cardinality error type. Query strings, fragments, credentials, headers, bodies and error messages are never captured. Instrumentation failures only ever drop these child spans; they never affect your server or the MCP request.

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Common vendors

Always copy the endpoint from your vendor’s OTLP documentation, since regions and paths vary by account. Typical shapes:

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Plans and downgrades

Traces export requires a paid plan. If your team downgrades, export stops but your configuration is kept, and upgrading resumes export with nothing to re-enter. To stop exporting on any plan, delete the destination.

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When a destination stops being retried

If a destination keeps failing, whether from a revoked credential, a decommissioned endpoint, or a vendor outage that does not end, Alpic stops retrying it and says so in the Telemetry section, along with the reason it stopped. A rejected credential or a wrong path stops it immediately, since neither recovers by being retried. A temporary failure has to persist for a long run of pushes first. Its siblings keep exporting. To start it again, fix the endpoint or the headers and save, or click Send a test trace: either one clears the state once it succeeds. Spans produced while a destination was stopped are not replayed to it. Traces are best-effort by design: they are produced inside the request path and buffered briefly before delivery, so a slow destination or a deploy can drop spans rather than ever slowing your requests down.