> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.promptlayer.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Overview

> Understand the request logs and traces that make up PromptLayer observability.

Observability helps you inspect model calls and follow the execution of AI applications across prompts, agents, tools, and workflows.

PromptLayer organizes observability data into two artifacts:

| Artifact                                                | Use it to                                                                                                                   |
| ------------------------------------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [**Request log**](/features/observability/request-logs) | Inspect one model call, including its input, output, model, timing, tokens, cost, status, metadata, and prompt association. |
| [**Trace**](/features/observability/traces)             | Follow one end-to-end operation as a hierarchy of LLM calls, agents, tools, retrieval steps, and custom application spans.  |

A trace can contain multiple model calls and therefore link to multiple request logs. Supported direct GenAI spans create request logs, while spans managed by `PromptLayer.run()` can link to the run's existing request log.

## Where to Go Next

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Request Logs" icon="rectangle-list" href="/features/observability/request-logs">
    Review individual model calls, errors, inputs, outputs, usage, and cost.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Traces" icon="diagram-project" href="/features/observability/traces">
    Inspect the parent-child execution path across model calls, tools, agents, and application code.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Search" icon="magnifying-glass" href="/features/search-and-analytics/search">
    Find request logs or traces with content queries, structured filters, and date ranges.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Analytics" icon="chart-pie-simple" href="/features/search-and-analytics/analytics">
    Aggregate the current request-log or trace query into charts.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

## Configure Observability

Once you know which artifact you need, follow the setup path for the code that produces it:

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Configure Request Logging" icon="rectangle-list" href="/features/observability/request-logs">
    Choose how requests are captured, then add IDs, tags, metadata, scores, and prompt associations.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Configure Tracing" icon="diagram-project" href="/features/observability/traces">
    Choose PromptLayer SDK spans, provider auto-instrumentation, a telemetry integration, or OpenTelemetry.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>

For indexing details, see the [Search Data Model](/features/search-and-analytics/search-data-model).