LLM observability with Laminar and OpenLLMetry

Introduction to Laminar

Laminar is an open-source platform for tracing and evaluating AI applications.

Laminar is fully compatible with OpenTelemetry, so you can use OpenLLMetry to trace your applications on Laminar.

Laminar’s OpenTelemetry backend supports both gRPC and HTTP trace exporters.

The recommended setup is to use gRPC, as it’s more efficient. You will need to create a gRPC exporter and pass it to the Traceloop SDK.

(Recommended) gRPC setup

1. Install dependencies

   pip install traceloop-sdk openai
   
2. Set up environment variables

   To get your API key, either sign up on Laminar and get it from the project settings, or spin up Laminar locally.

   import os
   os.environ["LMNR_PROJECT_API_KEY"] = "<YOUR_LMNR_PROJECT_API_KEY>"
   os.environ["LMNR_BASE_URL"] = "https://api.lmnr.ai:8443"
   
3. Initialize the OpenTelemetry gRPC exporter

   import os
   from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.grpc.trace_exporter import (
       OTLPSpanExporter,
   )
   
   exporter = OTLPSpanExporter(
       endpoint=os.environ["LMNR_BASE_URL"],
       # IMPORTANT: note that "authorization" must be lowercase
       headers={
           "authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['LMNR_PROJECT_API_KEY']}"
       }
   )
   
4. Initialize the Traceloop SDK

   from traceloop.sdk import Traceloop
   Traceloop.init(exporter=exporter)
   
5. Run your application

   from openai import OpenAI
   openai_client = OpenAI()
   
   chat_completion = openai_client.chat.completions.create(
       messages=[
           {
             "role": "user",
             "content": "What is Laminar flow?",
           }
       ],
       model="gpt-4.1-nano",
   )
   
   print(chat_completion)
   
6. Example trace in Laminar

   Example trace in Laminar. (Direct link)

(Alternative) HTTP quick setup

Laminar’s backend also supports accepting traces over HTTP, so for a minimal configuration change you can do:

TRACELOOP_BASE_URL="https://api.lmnr.ai"
TRACELOOP_HEADERS="Authorization=<YOUR_LMNR_PROJECT_API_KEY>"

and skip step 3 (exporter setup) above.

For more information check out the Laminar docs.