Monitoring LLM4S Applications

Observability and monitoring for LLM4S applications in production, covering latency, provider reliability, token usage, and cost visibility.

Table of contents

  1. Overview
  2. Logging in Production
    1. Logback Configuration
    2. What Gets Logged
    3. Capturing Provider Requests and Responses
  3. Tracing for Observability
    1. Configuration
    2. OpenTelemetry Integration
    3. Adding a Tracing Backend
  4. In-Process Trace Collection
    1. Quick Start
    2. Querying Traces
    3. Span Analytics
    4. Deterministic Agent Testing
    5. Composing with External Backends
    6. Span JSON Round-Trip
  5. Langfuse Monitoring Workflow
    1. What Gets Captured
    2. Trace Structure Example
    3. What an agent run sends
    4. Environment Setup
    5. Tracing API
  6. Metrics
    1. Add the module
    2. Turn it on from configuration
    3. Or build the pieces yourself
    4. What a call records
    5. The series
    6. Scrape it and alert on it
    7. Send metrics to more than one place
    8. Limits
  7. Health Checks
    1. Startup Validation
    2. Readiness Probes
    3. Liveness vs Readiness
  8. Provider Reliability Signals
    1. Failures to Monitor
    2. Logging Provider Failures
    3. Alerting Thresholds
  9. Token & Cost Monitoring
    1. Token Usage Tracking
    2. Cost Estimation
    3. Budget Awareness
  10. Production Checklist
    1. Tracing
    2. Metrics
    3. Logging
    4. Alerting
    5. Health
  11. Known Limitations
  12. Related Documentation

Overview

Monitoring LLM applications differs from traditional service monitoring. Key concerns include:

  • Latency variability - LLM calls range from milliseconds to minutes depending on model and prompt size
  • Provider reliability - External API dependencies with rate limits and outages
  • Token usage & cost - Direct correlation between usage and spend
  • Trace debugging - Understanding multi-turn conversations and tool executions
  • Quality signals - Beyond uptime: response relevance, hallucinations, guardrail triggers

LLM4S provides tracing infrastructure through multiple backends. Production monitoring typically combines tracing with your existing logging and alerting stack.

Logging in Production

LLM4S logs through the SLF4J API and does not bring a logging backend: add one to your application, such as libraryDependencies += "ch.qos.logback" % "logback-classic" % "1.5.34". Without one, SLF4J logs nothing and prints a single warning. Configure the backend for structured JSON output in production environments.

Logback Configuration 

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<!-- logback.xml -->
<configuration>
  <appender name="JSON" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder class="net.logstash.logback.encoder.LogstashEncoder"/>
  </appender>

  <!-- LLM4S logs at INFO for operational visibility -->
  <logger name="org.llm4s" level="INFO"/>
  
  <!-- Reduce noise from HTTP clients -->
  <logger name="sttp.client3" level="WARN"/>
  
  <root level="WARN">
    <appender-ref ref="JSON"/>
  </root>
</configuration>

What Gets Logged

At INFO level, LLM4S logs:

  • Client initialization and shutdown
  • Tracing backend connection status
  • Configuration validation results

At DEBUG level (not recommended for production):

  • Request/response payloads
  • Token counts per request
  • Tracing event details

Capturing Provider Requests and Responses

To see the exact request body a client sent and the exact body that came back, opt in to Provider Exchange Logging: each completed call is handed to a sink, and a ready-made sink appends JSON Lines to a file. It is off by default, and what it writes contains your prompts and the model’s answers, so read its privacy notes before enabling it.

Tracing for Observability

LLM4S supports five tracing backends:

Mode Use Case Configuration Module
langfuse Production LLM observability TRACING_MODE=langfuse llm4s-observability
opentelemetry Integration with existing APM TRACING_MODE=opentelemetry llm4s-observability-otel
console Local development/debugging TRACING_MODE=console llm4s-core
noop Disabled TRACING_MODE=noop llm4s-core
collector In-process queryable store Programmatic (see below) llm4s-observability

All backends implement the Tracing trait and can be composed with TracingComposer.combine(). llm4s-core holds the contract - Tracing, TraceEvent, TracingComposer, TracingMode, the TracingBackend SPI - and builds only console and noop itself. Every other mode is a TracingMode.Named (TracingMode.Named("langfuse"), TracingMode.Named("opentelemetry")) served by a backend its module registers, so adding the dependency is all it takes:

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libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
  "org.llm4s" %% "llm4s-observability"      % llm4sVersion, // Langfuse, trace collector/store, CostTracker
  "org.llm4s" %% "llm4s-observability-otel" % llm4sVersion  // OpenTelemetry
)

On 0.4.1 and earlier, Langfuse, the collector and CostTracker ship inside llm4s-core.

Configuration

Core reads only llm4s.tracing.mode, and hands the selected mode’s block to its backend as TracingSettings.extras. Each block, with its variable bindings, ships in the reference.conf of the module that reads it - langfuse in llm4s-observability, opentelemetry in llm4s-observability-otel - so the keys and variables below are unchanged, and apply once the module is on the classpath:

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llm4s {
  tracing {
    mode = ${?TRACING_MODE}
    
    langfuse {
      url       = ${?LANGFUSE_URL}
      publicKey = ${?LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY}
      secretKey = ${?LANGFUSE_SECRET_KEY}
    }
    
    opentelemetry {
      serviceName = ${?OTEL_SERVICE_NAME}
      endpoint    = ${?OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT}
    }
  }
}

OpenTelemetry Integration

For teams with existing APM infrastructure (Jaeger, Grafana Tempo, Datadog), the opentelemetry mode (alias otel) exports traces via OTLP:

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TRACING_MODE=opentelemetry
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-llm-service
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317

This requires the llm4s-observability-otel module:

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libraryDependencies += "org.llm4s" %% "llm4s-observability-otel" % llm4sVersion

The module registers itself for opentelemetry through a META-INF/services entry, so the dependency is all it takes. Its backend builds an OpenTelemetryConfig from the llm4s.tracing.opentelemetry block with OpenTelemetryConfig.fromExtras.

Adding a Tracing Backend

A backend is a TracingBackend - the extension point llm4s-observability and llm4s-observability-otel use - so adding one needs no change to llm4s:

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import org.llm4s.error.ConfigurationError
import org.llm4s.llmconnect.config.TracingSettings
import org.llm4s.trace.{ Tracing, TracingMode }
import org.llm4s.trace.spi.TracingBackend
import org.llm4s.types.Result

// A class with a public no-arg constructor - not an object: ServiceLoader instantiates it
final class DatadogTracingBackend extends TracingBackend:
  val mode: TracingMode = TracingMode.Named("datadog")
  def create(settings: TracingSettings): Result[Tracing] =
    settings.extras.get("apiKey") match
      case Some(key) => Right(new DatadogTracing(key, settings.extras.getOrElse("site", "datadoghq.com")))
      case None      => Left(ConfigurationError("llm4s.tracing.datadog.apiKey is not set"))

The backend’s settings live under llm4s.tracing.<mode>, and it reads them from settings.extras: that block for the selected mode, flattened to strings keyed by path within it (site, tags.team). Only the selected mode’s block is read. Ship the defaults and variable bindings in the backend module’s own reference.conf, which HOCON merges with the application’s:

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llm4s.tracing.datadog {
  site   = "datadoghq.com"
  site   = ${?DD_SITE}
  apiKey = ${?DD_API_KEY}
}

Declare it in src/main/resources/META-INF/services/org.llm4s.trace.spi.TracingBackend:

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com.example.DatadogTracingBackend

TRACING_MODE=datadog then selects it. Tracing.fromSettings(settings) returns a ConfigurationError when no backend serves the configured mode, and the backend’s own error when create fails; Tracing.create(settings) logs either and falls back to NoOpTracing. Where services files do not survive packaging (some shaded jars), register the backend explicitly: Tracing.fromSettings(settings, TracingBackends.of(new DatadogTracingBackend)).

In-Process Trace Collection

TraceCollectorTracing + InMemoryTraceStore provide a fully queryable trace store that runs entirely within the JVM — no external service required. They ship in llm4s-observability (org.llm4s.trace, org.llm4s.trace.store, org.llm4s.trace.model). Recorded spans can be filtered, paginated, and serialized to JSON.

This is the primary backend for unit testing and for in-process analytics (latency breakdowns, cache hit rates, token cost per span kind).

Quick Start 

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import org.llm4s.trace._
import org.llm4s.trace.store._
import org.llm4s.trace.model._

val store  = InMemoryTraceStore()
// apply returns Result[TraceCollectorTracing]; InMemoryTraceStore never fails
val tracer = TraceCollectorTracing(store).getOrElse(sys.error("tracing init failed"))

// give the tracer to the agent: every run it makes is traced
val result = for {
  agent  <- Agent.builder("assistant", client).withTools(tools).withTracing(tracer).build()
  result <- agent.run("query")
} yield result

// retrieve all spans; an agent's runs are recorded as `graph.*` custom events,
// spans named `custom:graph.run_started`, `custom:graph.task_completed`, ...
val spans = store.getSpans(tracer.traceId)

Querying Traces

TraceStore.queryTraces accepts a TraceQuery with optional filters and cursor-based pagination. All filters combine with AND semantics.

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import java.time.Instant

// recent traces
val page = store.queryTraces(
  TraceQuery.withTimeRange(Instant.now.minusSeconds(3600), Instant.now)
)

// failed traces only
val errors = store.queryTraces(TraceQuery.withStatus(SpanStatus.Error(""))).traces

// by metadata tag (e.g. experiment grouping)
val traceIds = store.searchByMetadata("experiment", "v2")

// combined filter with pagination
val q = TraceQuery(
  startTimeFrom = Some(Instant.now.minusSeconds(3600)),
  status        = Some(SpanStatus.Error("")),
  limit         = 10
)
val first = store.queryTraces(q)
if (first.hasNext) {
  val second = store.queryTraces(q.copy(cursor = first.nextCursor))
}

Span Analytics

Every Span carries startTime, endTime, kind, status, and typed attributes, making it straightforward to compute aggregates without an external system.

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val allSpans = store.getSpans(tracer.traceId)

// total milliseconds spent in LLM calls
val llmMs = allSpans
  .filter(_.kind == SpanKind.LlmCall)
  .flatMap(s => s.endTime.map(e => e.toEpochMilli - s.startTime.toEpochMilli))
  .sum

// prompt tokens across the run
val promptTokens = allSpans
  .filter(_.kind == SpanKind.LlmCall)
  .flatMap(_.attributes.get("prompt_tokens").flatMap(_.asLong))
  .sum

// semantic cache hit rate
val cacheSpans = allSpans.filter(_.kind == SpanKind.Cache)
val hitRate = if (cacheSpans.isEmpty) 0.0
  else cacheSpans.count(
    _.attributes.get("hit").flatMap(_.asBoolean).contains(true)
  ).toDouble / cacheSpans.size

Deterministic Agent Testing

Wire TraceCollectorTracing in ScalaTest specs to assert on recorded spans without mocking external services or parsing console output.

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import org.llm4s.trace.model.SpanKind
import org.scalatest.flatspec.AnyFlatSpec
import org.scalatest.matchers.should.Matchers
import org.scalatest.BeforeAndAfterEach

class AgentBehaviourSpec extends AnyFlatSpec with Matchers with BeforeAndAfterEach {

  val store  = InMemoryTraceStore()
  val tracer = TraceCollectorTracing(store).getOrElse(fail("tracing init failed"))

  override def afterEach(): Unit = store.clear()

  // built once per spec, with a scripted client and the tracer
  def agent = Agent.builder("assistant", client).withTools(tools).withTracing(tracer).build()
    .getOrElse(fail("agent build failed"))

  /** One span per graph task the agent's `call-tool` node completed: one per tool call. */
  def toolCalls = store.getSpans(tracer.traceId).filter { s =>
    s.name == "custom:graph.task_completed" &&
    s.attributes.get("nodeId").flatMap(_.asString).exists(_.endsWith("/call-tool"))
  }

  "agent" should "call a tool exactly once" in {
    agent.run("what is 6 * 7?") shouldBe a[Right[_, _]]

    toolCalls should have size 1
  }

  "agent" should "record no failed task on a valid query" in {
    agent.run("hello") shouldBe a[Right[_, _]]

    store.getSpans(tracer.traceId).map(_.name) should not contain "custom:graph.task_failed"
  }
}

Composing with External Backends

TracingComposer.combine() fans events out to multiple backends simultaneously. Use this to keep a local in-process snapshot while also forwarding to Langfuse or OpenTelemetry.

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val store     = InMemoryTraceStore()
val collector = TraceCollectorTracing(store).getOrElse(sys.error("tracing init failed"))
// LangfuseConfigLoader reads llm4s.tracing.langfuse whatever TRACING_MODE selects
val langfuse  = LangfuseTracing.from(LangfuseConfigLoader.default().getOrElse(sys.error("bad langfuse config")))

val tracer = TracingComposer.combine(collector, langfuse)
val agent  = Agent.builder("assistant", client).withTools(tools).withTracing(tracer).build()
agent.flatMap(_.run("query"))

// local span queries still work
val graphSpans = store.getSpans(collector.traceId).filter(_.name.startsWith("custom:graph."))

Span JSON Round-Trip

TraceModelJson serialises and deserialises every span type losslessly via ujson. Use this to write spans to disk, ship them to a custom HTTP endpoint, or reload them for offline analysis.

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import org.llm4s.trace.model.TraceModelJson._

val json   = span.toJson                      // ujson.Value
val parsed = TraceModelJson.parseSpan(json)   // Result[Span]

parsed match {
  case Right(s)    => println(s.name)
  case Left(error) => println(s"Parse error: ${error.field} — ${error.reason}")
}

Langfuse Monitoring Workflow

Langfuse provides purpose-built LLM observability. When configured, LLM4S automatically traces:

What Gets Captured

Event Type Description Data Included
Traces Top-level request lifecycle Query, final output, duration
Generations Each LLM call Model, prompt, completion, tokens, latency
Spans Tool executions, retrieval ops Tool name, input/output, duration
Events Custom markers User-defined metadata

Trace Structure Example

A typical RAG query produces this hierarchy:

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Trace: "RAG Query Processing"
├── Span: "Document Retrieval" (200ms)
│   └── Event: "Retrieved 5 documents"
├── Generation: "Context Synthesis" (1,200ms)
│   ├── Model: gpt-4o
│   ├── Prompt tokens: 1,234
│   └── Completion tokens: 456
└── Event: "Response Delivered"

What an agent run sends

An agent built with Agent.builder(...).withTracing(tracing) sends, for each run:

  • graph.* custom events for the runtime’s own events (run, task and checkpoint lifecycle), and agent.* custom events for the agent’s durable events (agent.model_call_completed, agent.tool_executed, agent.handed_off, agent.guardrail_blocked), which carry no message content;
  • a TokenUsageRecorded for each model call that reports usage;
  • one TraceEvent.AgentRunEnded when the run ends: thread id, run id, the active agent, a status (completed, suspended, step_limit_reached, blocked:<guardrail>, cancelled, timed_out, failed), this turn’s messages (from its user message on; empty when blocked, cancelled, timed out or failed) and the run’s own UsageSummary - the model calls this run made, summed from its agent.model_call_completed events, not the thread’s total, so per-run figures add up.

A run that crashes without a terminal event is traced as ErrorOccurred, with a WARN, and has no AgentRunEnded; it is traced as soon as the run’s last event has been, with no fixed delay. Message content reaches tracing only in AgentRunEnded.messages; a blocked turn’s content is not in it. (The kernel’s own TracingSubscriber, used for graphs that are not agents, names agent events graph.custom; withTracing on an agent names them agent.*.)

Backend What AgentRunEnded shows
Langfuse One trace per run (trace id = run id), grouped in a session per thread (session id = thread id); input is the first user message, output the last assistant message; metadata holds the agent, status and usage; one span per message
OpenTelemetry An INTERNAL span “Agent Run” with thread, run, agent, status, message count and gen_ai.usage.* totals
TraceCollector A SpanKind.AgentCall span with the same attributes, token totals as input_tokens/output_tokens, and no cost
Console A multi-line “Agent Run Ended” block: agent, status, thread, run, message count, token totals

Environment Setup

Langfuse is served by llm4s-observability:

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libraryDependencies += "org.llm4s" %% "llm4s-observability" % llm4sVersion

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TRACING_MODE=langfuse
LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY=<your-langfuse-public-key>
LANGFUSE_SECRET_KEY=<your-langfuse-secret-key>
LANGFUSE_URL=https://cloud.langfuse.com  # or self-hosted URL

Both keys are required. With either missing, Tracing.fromSettings returns a ConfigurationError naming what is unset - e.g. llm4s.tracing.langfuse.publicKey (LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY) - and Tracing.create logs that error and falls back to NoOpTracing. Without llm4s-observability on the classpath, the error names the artifact to add instead. To read the Langfuse settings whatever TRACING_MODE selects (for example to combine Langfuse with another tracer), use LangfuseConfigLoader.default() from org.llm4s.config.

Tracing API

LLM4S exposes a Tracing trait for custom instrumentation:

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import org.llm4s.trace.{Tracing, TraceEvent}
import scala.concurrent.duration.*

// Trace custom events
tracing.traceEvent(TraceEvent.CustomEvent("cache_hit", ujson.Obj("key" -> "query_123")))

// Trace token usage explicitly
tracing.traceTokenUsage(usage, model = "gpt-4o", operation = "completion")

// Trace a finished agent run (an agent built withTracing does this itself, once per run)
tracing.traceEvent(TraceEvent.AgentRunEnded(threadId, runId, agent, status, messages, usage))

// Trace costs
tracing.traceCost(
  costUsd = 0.0234,
  model = "gpt-4o",
  operation = "completion",
  tokenCount = 1500,
  costType = "total"
)

// Trace RAG operations
tracing.traceRAGOperation(
  operation = "search",
  duration = 150.millis,
  embeddingTokens = Some(128),
  llmPromptTokens = None,
  llmCompletionTokens = None,
  totalCostUsd = Some(0.0001)
)

Metrics

Tracing records what happened inside one request. Metrics count what happens across all of them: requests, tokens, cost, errors and latency, per provider and model. They are cheap enough to alert on, and they answer “is a provider failing right now?” faster than a trace search.

The contract is MetricsCollector in llm4s-core (@Stable): observeRequest, addTokens and recordCost, plus calls for retries, circuit-breaker transitions, errors and image generation. Every chat client calls the collector it was built with, and collectors are expected not to throw. The default is MetricsCollector.noop, so metrics cost nothing until you pass one in. llm4s-observability-prometheus provides the implementation, PrometheusMetrics, and the HTTP endpoint that serves it, PrometheusEndpoint.

Add the module 

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libraryDependencies += "org.llm4s" %% "llm4s-observability-prometheus" % llm4sVersion

On 0.4.1 and earlier this code ships inside llm4s-core; the migration note has the details. Package names are unchanged.

Turn it on from configuration

Metrics are off unless asked for, because turning them on starts an HTTP server. To turn them on:

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llm4s {
  metrics {
    enabled = true
    prometheus {
      enabled = true
      port    = 9090
    }
  }
}

The module’s reference.conf ships enabled = false, prometheus.enabled = true and port = 9090, so setting only enabled = true is enough: the Prometheus backend is used on port 9090. MetricsConfigLoader.default() reads the block and returns Result[(MetricsCollector, Option[PrometheusEndpoint])]:

llm4s.metrics Collector Endpoint
enabled = false (the default) MetricsCollector.noop none, no server is started
enabled = true, prometheus.enabled = false MetricsCollector.noop none
enabled = true PrometheusMetrics started on prometheus.port; Left(ConfigurationError) if the port is taken

Pass the collector to the client when you build it:

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import org.llm4s.config.{Llm4sConfig, MetricsConfigLoader}
import org.llm4s.llmconnect.LLMConnect
import org.llm4s.model.ModelRegistryService

val application = for {
  providerConfig  <- Llm4sConfig.defaultProvider()
  registryService <- Llm4sConfig.modelRegistryService()
  given ModelRegistryService = registryService
  configured <- MetricsConfigLoader.default()
  (metrics, endpoint) = configured
  client <- LLMConnect.getClient(providerConfig, metrics).left.map { error =>
    endpoint.foreach(_.stop()) // release the server if client creation fails
    error
  }
} yield (client, endpoint)

On success, retain the returned endpoint alongside the client and call endpoint.foreach(_.stop()) during application shutdown. The collector and endpoint from the loader share the same registry.

LlmClientOptions(metrics = ...) is the same thing through the options overload of LLMConnect.getClient. The endpoint that MetricsConfigLoader starts stays up until you call PrometheusEndpoint.stop(), which is safe to call twice.

Or build the pieces yourself

If you already own a PrometheusRegistry, create the collector on it and start the endpoint on the same registry:

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import io.prometheus.metrics.model.registry.PrometheusRegistry
import org.llm4s.metrics.{ PrometheusEndpoint, PrometheusMetrics }

val registry = new PrometheusRegistry()
val metrics  = new PrometheusMetrics(registry)

val endpoint: Option[PrometheusEndpoint] =
  PrometheusEndpoint.start(9090, registry) match { // Result[PrometheusEndpoint]; serves /metrics
    case Right(ep) => Some(ep)
    case Left(error) =>
      // the port could not be bound: report this as a startup failure rather than
      // running with metrics configured but nothing to scrape
      None
  }
// retain the handle: endpoint.foreach(_.stop()) at application shutdown (safe to call twice)

What a call records

  • Every call, successful or not, records one request with its latency and its outcome. A failure is classified into an error kind (rate_limit, timeout, authentication, network, validation, service_error, execution_error, cancelled or unknown) from the error the client returned.
  • Tokens and cost are recorded only on success, and only when the completion carries them: tokens when the provider reported usage, cost when the client attached an estimated cost. A call with neither adds nothing to those series.
  • A streamed call is recorded once, when the stream has finished, with the total latency, not as it goes.
  • Embedding calls are not recorded, and no RAG- or reranking-specific series exists. The chat calls that RAG and the LLM reranker make through an instrumented client are recorded as ordinary requests - RAG’s answer generation and LLMReranker’s scoring both go through the client’s complete - so that traffic does show up in the request series under the provider and model. The Cohere reranker calls Cohere’s API directly, not through an LLM client, and is not recorded. Image generation is recorded through InstrumentedImageGenerationClient, which wraps an image client.

The series

Series Type Labels
llm4s_requests_total counter provider, model, status (success or error_<kind>)
llm4s_tokens_total counter provider, model, type (input or output)
llm4s_cost_usd_total counter provider, model
llm4s_errors_total counter provider, error_type
llm4s_request_duration_seconds histogram provider, model; buckets 0.1, 0.5, 1, 2, 5, 10, 30, 60 and 120 seconds
llm4s_image_generations_total counter provider, model, operation, status
llm4s_images_generated_total counter provider, model
llm4s_image_generation_duration_seconds histogram provider, model, operation
llm4s_image_generation_cost_usd_total counter provider, model
llm4s_image_generation_errors_total counter provider, model, operation, error_type

After one successful call and one rate-limited call to gpt-4o, the chat series on /metrics look like this (comment lines left out; the second call took 90 seconds):

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llm4s_cost_usd_total{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai"} 0.0021
llm4s_errors_total{error_type="rate_limit",provider="openai"} 1.0
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="0.1"} 0
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="0.5"} 0
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="1.0"} 0
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="2.0"} 1
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="5.0"} 1
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="10.0"} 1
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="30.0"} 1
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="60.0"} 1
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="120.0"} 2
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",le="+Inf"} 2
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_count{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai"} 2
llm4s_request_duration_seconds_sum{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai"} 91.5
llm4s_requests_total{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",status="error_rate_limit"} 1.0
llm4s_requests_total{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",status="success"} 1.0
llm4s_tokens_total{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",type="input"} 120.0
llm4s_tokens_total{model="gpt-4o",provider="openai",type="output"} 30.0

Scrape it and alert on it

Point Prometheus at the endpoint:

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scrape_configs:
  - job_name: 'llm4s'
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['localhost:9090']

Queries to start from (standard PromQL over the series above):

# Requests per second, by provider
sum by (provider) (rate(llm4s_requests_total[5m]))

# Share of requests that failed
sum(rate(llm4s_requests_total{status!="success"}[5m])) / sum(rate(llm4s_requests_total[5m]))

# 95th percentile latency, by provider
histogram_quantile(0.95, sum by (le, provider) (rate(llm4s_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])))

# Rate-limit errors per second
sum(rate(llm4s_errors_total{error_type="rate_limit"}[5m]))

# Estimated spend over the last hour, by model
sum by (model) (increase(llm4s_cost_usd_total[1h]))

Send metrics to more than one place

MetricsCollector.compose forwards every MetricsCollector method, the two image-generation ones (observeImageGeneration and recordImageGenerationCost) included, to each collector it is given, so Prometheus can run next to CostTracker (in llm4s-observability) or a collector of your own, and a composed collector handed to InstrumentedImageGenerationClient records image metrics in every child. A collector that throws does not stop the others:

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import org.llm4s.metrics.MetricsCollector

val both = MetricsCollector.compose(metrics, myCollector)
// LLMConnect.getClient(providerConfig, both)

Limits

  • Retries, circuit-breaker transitions and ReliableClient’s error events have no series of their own. ReliableClient takes its own collector argument and reports those three kinds of event to it, but PrometheusMetrics does not implement them. The request series still see every attempt: ReliableClient calls the wrapped client once per attempt, and a metrics-enabled client records each of those calls, so a call that fails twice and then succeeds adds three requests - two error_*, one success - and three latency observations. Request and error rates are per attempt, not per logical call.
  • The latency buckets are fixed (0.1 to 120 seconds); there is no way to configure them.
  • Counters live in the process. A restart starts them from zero, which is what rate() and increase() expect.
  • The endpoint has no authentication and no TLS: llm4s starts it with only a port and a registry. Keep it off the public network and let your network policy decide who can scrape it.
  • Labels are provider and model. The number of series grows with the number of distinct models you call, not with traffic.

Health Checks

Startup Validation

Use client.validate() during application startup to fail fast on misconfiguration:

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val clientResult = for {
  config <- Llm4sConfig.provider()
  client <- LLMConnect.getClient(config)
  _      <- client.validate()
} yield client

clientResult match {
  case Left(error) =>
    logger.error(s"LLM client validation failed: $error")
    System.exit(1)
  case Right(client) =>
    logger.info("LLM client ready")
}

Readiness Probes

For Kubernetes deployments, include LLM connectivity in readiness checks:

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// Integrate with your framework's health check mechanism
def isLLMReady(): Boolean =
  client.validate().isRight

Liveness vs Readiness

  • Liveness: Application process is healthy (standard JVM checks)
  • Readiness: Can serve LLM requests (includes client.validate())

Separating these prevents pod restarts during temporary provider outages.

Provider Reliability Signals

Failures to Monitor

Signal Meaning Action
429 Too Many Requests Rate limited Back off, check quotas
503 Service Unavailable Provider outage Failover or queue
Connection timeout Network issue Retry with backoff
Response timeout Slow generation Increase timeout or reduce prompt

Logging Provider Failures 

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import org.llm4s.error._

def logProviderFailure(error: LLMError): Unit = error match {
  case rle: RateLimitError =>
    logger.warn(s"Rate limited: ${rle.message}, retry after: ${rle.retryAfter.fold("unknown")(_.toString)}")
    
  case ServiceError(message, httpStatus, provider, requestId) =>
    logger.error(s"Provider API error [$httpStatus]: $message")
    
  case NetworkError(message, cause, endpoint) =>
    logger.error(
      s"Network failure from $endpoint: $message" +
        cause.map(c => s" - ${c.getMessage}").getOrElse("")
    )
    
  case timeout: TimeoutError =>
    logger.warn(s"Request timeout: ${timeout.message}")
    
  case other =>
    logger.error(s"LLM error: $other")
}

Alerting Thresholds

Recommended alert conditions for LLM services:

Metric Warning Critical
Error rate > 1% > 5%
P95 latency > 10s > 30s
Rate limit events > 10/min > 50/min
Daily token spend > 80% budget > 95% budget

Token & Cost Monitoring

Token Usage Tracking

LLM4S traces token usage through the tracing infrastructure. With Langfuse, usage appears automatically in the dashboard.

For programmatic access:

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completion.usage match {
  case Some(usage) =>
    logger.info(
      s"Tokens - prompt: ${usage.promptTokens}, " +
      s"completion: ${usage.completionTokens}, " +
      s"total: ${usage.totalTokens}"
    )
    
    // Trace for aggregation
    tracing.traceTokenUsage(usage, model, "completion")
    
  case None =>
    logger.warn("Token usage not available from provider")
}

Cost Estimation

Pricing varies by provider and changes over time. For cost tracking:

  • Langfuse automatically calculates costs when model pricing is configured in its dashboard
  • Provider billing APIs offer authoritative usage and spend data
  • Manual tracking can use tracing.traceCost() with your own pricing logic
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// Track cost through tracing (pricing logic is your responsibility)
tracing.traceCost(
  costUsd = estimatedCost,
  model = "gpt-4o",
  operation = "completion",
  tokenCount = usage.totalTokens,
  costType = "total"
)

Budget Awareness

Use context budget methods to prevent runaway costs:

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import org.llm4s.agent.{Agent, ContextWindowConfig}
import org.llm4s.agent.graph.middleware.ContextWindowMiddleware
import org.llm4s.types.HeadroomPercent

// Get available tokens considering model limits and safety margin
val budget = client.getContextBudget(HeadroomPercent.Standard)
val config = ContextWindowConfig(maxTokens = Some(budget))

// ContextWindowMiddleware uses a default token counter (words * 1.3)
// or accepts a custom tokenCounter function for more accurate estimation
val agent = Agent.builder("assistant", client)
  .withMiddleware(new ContextWindowMiddleware(config))
  .build()

Production Checklist

Before deploying, verify monitoring coverage:

Tracing

  • TRACING_MODE set to langfuse or opentelemetry
  • Tracing credentials configured and tested
  • Traces visible in dashboard (test with sample request)

Metrics

  • llm4s.metrics.enabled = true, and Prometheus scrapes the /metrics endpoint
  • The endpoint is reachable only from your monitoring network
  • Error-ratio and latency alerts use llm4s_requests_total and llm4s_request_duration_seconds

Logging

  • Structured JSON logging enabled
  • Log levels appropriate (INFO for org.llm4s)
  • Logs shipping to aggregation system

Alerting

  • Error rate alerts configured
  • Latency (P95/P99) alerts configured
  • Rate limit event alerts configured
  • Cost/budget alerts configured

Health

  • client.validate() called on startup
  • Readiness probe includes LLM connectivity
  • Graceful degradation for provider outages

Known Limitations

Current monitoring limitations in LLM4S:

  • Prometheus metrics cover LLM and image-generation calls, not traces (see Metrics) - PrometheusMetrics (llm4s-observability-prometheus) records requests, tokens, cost, errors and latency through MetricsCollector; for span-level data, read InMemoryTraceStore and push to your Prometheus client, or implement a custom TraceStore that writes directly to a metrics registry
  • No automatic cost aggregation - Langfuse provides this via its dashboard; for in-process aggregation, sum cost_usd attributes from SpanKind.Rag and SpanKind.LlmCall spans in InMemoryTraceStore
  • No real-time streaming metrics - Streaming completions are traced on completion, not in-flight
  • Guardrail metrics require custom tracing - Add traceEvent calls in guardrail implementations; the resulting spans are then queryable via InMemoryTraceStore

These are tracked in the Production Readiness Roadmap.

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