What is an artificial intelligence execution trace?

Definition

An artificial intelligence execution trace preserves what happened during a production session rather than only the final answer. It can include intermediate model responses, tool calls, errors, timing and observations needed to reconstruct the workflow.

Traces provide realistic material for evaluation and debugging. They may contain private data, so platforms should sample, redact and retain them under explicit policies while preserving enough provenance for reviewers to understand each case.

Acronyms and aliases

agent trace variantAI execution trace variant

Frequently asked questions

How are execution traces used in artificial intelligence evaluation?

Teams sample traces into review sets, add domain annotations and preserve representative cases as repeatable evaluation data.

What privacy risks do execution traces create?

Traces can contain user inputs, tool results and business data, so access, redaction, retention and audit controls are necessary.

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