dunetrace 0.3.13

Behavioral observability for AI agents

Dunetrace SDK

Runtime observability for AI agents. Detects tool loops, context bloat, prompt injection, and 12 other failure patterns in real-time — with a Slack alert while the run is still live.

Zero external dependencies.

Install

pip install dunetrace                    # core SDK
pip install 'dunetrace[langchain]'       # + LangChain / LangGraph
pip install 'dunetrace[otel]'            # + OpenTelemetry exporter

Quickstart

LangChain / LangGraph

from dunetrace import Dunetrace
from dunetrace.integrations.langchain import DunetraceCallbackHandler

dt = Dunetrace()
callback = DunetraceCallbackHandler(dt, agent_id="my-agent")

result = agent.invoke(input, config={"callbacks": [callback]})
dt.shutdown()

Pure Python / custom agent — decorator style

from dunetrace import Dunetrace

dt = Dunetrace()

@dt.tool                                  # auto-emits tool.called / tool.responded
def web_search(query: str) -> list: ...   # args are SHA-256 hashed, never transmitted raw

@dt.trace                                 # agent_id defaults to "my_agent"
def my_agent(question: str) -> str:
    return web_search(question)[0]        # zero SDK calls needed inside function bodies

@dt.trace supports bare usage (@dt.trace with no parens), explicit agent ID (@dt.trace("research-agent")), and keyword args (@dt.trace(model="gpt-4o")). @dt.tool works on both sync and async functions and is a no-op when called outside a run context.

Or with @dt.agent + auto-instrumentation:

dt.init(agent_id="my-agent")   # patches openai, anthropic, httpx, requests globally

@dt.agent(model="gpt-4o")      # agent_id inherited from init()
def run_agent(query: str) -> str:
    return openai_client.chat.completions.create(...).choices[0].message.content

FastAPI / Flask — one line each, see docs/integrations.md.

What it detects

Detector	What it catches	Severity
TOOL_LOOP	Same tool called 3+ times in a 5-call window	HIGH
TOOL_THRASHING	Agent alternates between exactly two tools	HIGH
RETRY_STORM	Same tool fails 3+ times in a row	HIGH
LLM_TRUNCATION_LOOP	finish_reason=length fires 2+ times	HIGH
EMPTY_LLM_RESPONSE	Zero-length output with finish_reason=stop	HIGH
CASCADING_TOOL_FAILURE	3+ consecutive failures across 2+ distinct tools	HIGH
SLOW_STEP	Tool call >15s or LLM call >30s	MEDIUM/HIGH
TOOL_AVOIDANCE	Final answer without using available tools	MEDIUM
GOAL_ABANDONMENT	Tool use stops, then 4+ consecutive LLM calls with no exit	MEDIUM
CONTEXT_BLOAT	Prompt tokens grow 3× from first to last LLM call	MEDIUM
STEP_COUNT_INFLATION	Run used >2× the P75 step count for this agent	MEDIUM
FIRST_STEP_FAILURE	Error or empty output at step ≤2	MEDIUM
REASONING_STALL	LLM:tool-call ratio ≥4× — reasoning without acting	MEDIUM
RAG_EMPTY_RETRIEVAL	Retrieval returned 0 results but agent answered anyway	MEDIUM
PROMPT_INJECTION_SIGNAL	Input matches known injection / jailbreak patterns	CRITICAL

Output modes

Mode	How to enable	Destination
HTTP ingest (default)	endpoint="http://…"	Dunetrace backend → detection, alerts, dashboard
Loki NDJSON	emit_as_json=True	stdout → Promtail / Grafana Alloy
OpenTelemetry	otel_exporter=DunetraceOTelExporter(provider)	Tempo, Honeycomb, Datadog, Jaeger

Backend

git clone https://github.com/dunetrace/dunetrace
cd dunetrace && cp .env.example .env && docker compose up -d

Dashboard → http://localhost:3000 · Ingest → http://localhost:8001

Deploy markers

Annotate the detector timeline with release boundaries so you can correlate failure spikes with deploys:

# Call from your deploy script, CI/CD pipeline, or app startup
dt.mark_deploy("my-agent", version="v1.4.2", commit="abc1234", env="production")

The dashboard renders blue dashed vertical lines at each deploy timestamp on the 30-day detector rate chart. Fire-and-forget — runs on a background thread, never blocks the caller.

Additional keyword arguments are stored as meta and shown on hover.

Policies

Runtime guardrails that fire mid-run — before a failure propagates. Define conditions with any supported trigger and attach a stop, switch_model, inject_prompt, or log action.

from dunetrace import Dunetrace

dt = Dunetrace()

# Stop the run if tool call count exceeds 5
dt.add_policy(
    name="cap tool calls",
    condition={"trigger": "tool_call_count", "operator": "gt", "value": 5},
    action={"type": "stop"},
)

# Downgrade model when cost exceeds $0.50
dt.add_policy(
    name="cost cap",
    condition={"trigger": "cost_usd", "operator": "gt", "value": 0.50},
    action={"type": "switch_model", "params": {"model": "gpt-4o-mini"}},
)

# Inject a corrective prompt when a loop is detected
dt.add_policy(
    name="loop fix",
    condition={"trigger": "signal", "operator": "eq", "value": "TOOL_LOOP"},
    action={"type": "inject_prompt", "params": {"prompt": "Stop repeating tool calls. Summarise what you know and answer."}},
)

with dt.run("my-agent", user_input=query, tools=["search"]) as run:
    ...
    # After a stop policy fires, PolicyViolation is raised
    # After switch_model fires, check run.model_override
    # After inject_prompt fires, check run.pop_prompt_addition()

Policies can also be defined in the dashboard and fetched automatically at run start (60-second TTL cache per agent). See docs/integrations.md for the full reference.

Tests

python -m unittest discover -s tests -v

307 tests, no network required.

Links

• Full integration docs
• GitHub
• Issues