---
title: Observability
description: "The ability to infer a system's internal state and behavior from emitted traces, logs, metrics, events, and artifacts."
canonical_url: 'https://darkfactory.dev/glossary/observability'
markdown_url: 'https://darkfactory.dev/glossary/observability.md'
collection: glossary
date_published: '2026-08-03T00:00:00-04:00'
date_modified: '2026-08-26T00:00:00-04:00'
---

# Observability


## Definition

Observability is the ability to infer a system's state and behavior from the traces, logs, metrics, events, and artifacts it emits. For an agent, useful evidence includes model and tool calls, state transitions, permissions, approvals, costs, errors, and the external effects of actions.

Conventional infrastructure telemetry can show that a request was fast and successful while the agent completed the wrong task. Agent observability therefore needs semantic signals: what goal was active, which evidence supported a claim, why a gate passed, and what outcome occurred in the world.

More logging is not automatically better. Capture enough to reconstruct important decisions, protect secrets and personal data, define retention, and make high-cardinality traces searchable. An unread pile of sensitive transcripts is operational liability, not observability.

## Distinguish it from nearby terms

Monitoring watches known conditions and thresholds. Observability supplies evidence for investigating both known and unanticipated states. Auditability focuses on reconstructing accountable events and decisions over time.

## Check your understanding

A tool call returns HTTP 200, so the dashboard marks the run successful. The tool updated the wrong customer's record. Transport telemetry is healthy; semantic observability is missing.

## Related factory areas

- [Runtime operations, observability, incidents & healing](https://darkfactory.dev/factory/runtime-operations)

## Evidence and further reading

- [When Errors Become Narratives: a taxonomy of silent failures](https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.14589)
- [Shepherd: A Runtime Substrate Empowering Meta-Agents with a Formalized Execution Trace](https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.10913)