miniobserve 0.1.4

Lightweight LLM observability for indie developers and small teams

🔭 MiniObserve

Local-first observability for AI agents and LLM apps.

SQLite by default. No account. No cloud. Just run it.

cd backend && pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7823
# open http://localhost:7823

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Who this is for

You're building or experimenting with AI agents and you want to know what's actually happening inside them.

You want to:

• See every LLM call, tool call, and agent step — in order, with timings
• Know which calls are burning tokens and costing money
• Spot when your agent is looping, stuck, or waiting on a slow tool
• Check if prompt caching is actually working
• Keep your data on your own machine

You don't want to:

• Send data to a third-party observability platform
• Pay for yet another subscription
• Deal with infra or configuration

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Point your coding agent here

The fastest way to add MiniObserve to your app is to let your coding agent do it.

Drag and drop AGENTS.md into your coding agent. Then tell it:

"Read AGENTS.md and instrument my app with miniobserve."

The agent will handle installation, setup, and wiring the SDK into your code.

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Manual setup

Step 1 — Start the backend (the dashboard + ingest API)

cd backend && pip install -r requirements.txt
uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7823

Step 2 — Install the SDK

pip install miniobserve
# For LangChain / LangGraph:
pip install "miniobserve[langchain]"

Step 3 — Verify the connection

miniobserve hello

Open http://localhost:7823 — you'll see a test ping appear in the dashboard.

This does not add tracing to your app. It just confirms the server is reachable. To actually capture your agent's LLM calls, tool calls, and steps — point your coding agent at AGENTS.md. For a LangGraph app it's 3–4 lines added to your existing graph.invoke(). For custom agents it's a lightweight Tracer wrapper.

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What you get

• Run timeline — every LLM call, tool call, and agent step in order with latency
• Cognitive phases — per-span classification: thinking / calling / synthesizing / executing
• Cost tracking — per-call and per-run cost estimates with cached vs. uncached token breakdown
• Stuck & waiting detection — flags when your agent loops on the same tool or waits on a slow one
• Prompt cache visibility — see cache hit rates across a run at a glance
• Trace view — drill into any span for the full prompt, response, tool args, and metadata

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FAQ

Is my data private? Yes — in local mode (SQLite, default) nothing leaves your machine. No telemetry, no external calls.

How do API keys work? In local mode the server accepts requests with no key or with Bearer sk-local-default-key. If you want to separate traces by app or share with teammates, set MINIOBSERVE_API_KEYS="sk_abc123:my-app" in backend/.env. Each key maps to an app name; logs are scoped per app. See AGENTS.md for details.

What are the colored phase labels I see in a run trace?

Phase	What it means
thinking	LLM reasoning before any tools have run
calling	LLM emitting tool calls
synthesizing	LLM integrating tool results into a response
executing	A tool or child-agent doing real work
unclassified	Span didn't match any heuristic

cognitive_waiting and cognitive_stuck are flags, not phases — they appear when a tool is unusually slow or the agent repeats the same tool call with the same arguments.

Which AI providers are supported?

Provider	Support
OpenAI (gpt-4o, gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4.1, o3, o4-mini)	Full — cost estimates + token normalization
Anthropic (claude-3-5-sonnet, claude-3-5-haiku, claude-opus-4)	Full — cost estimates + token normalization
OpenRouter	Passthrough — cost estimated when model matches OpenAI/Anthropic pricing
Ollama	Passthrough — stored with zero cost

Can I use this without the Python SDK? Yes — any language can send spans via POST /api/log or POST /api/logs. Full schema at /docs on the running server.

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Storage

SQLite (default) — zero config, data at ~/.miniobserve/logs.db. Just run the backend.

Supabase — for multi-device, shared teams, or cloud hosting:

export MINIOBSERVE_BACKEND=supabase
export SUPABASE_URL=https://<project>.supabase.co
export SUPABASE_SERVICE_ROLE_KEY=eyJ...
cd backend && uvicorn main:app --host 0.0.0.0 --port 7823

Run backend/supabase_schema.sql once in the Supabase SQL editor first.

See HOSTING.md for Docker, HTTPS, and production setup.

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License

MIT