OTel Compatibility

Breadcrumb uses OpenTelemetry under the hood but never registers as the global provider. This means it works alongside Sentry, Datadog, and other OTel-based tools out of the box - no configuration needed.

Default setup

If you followed the installation guide, you're already set. Breadcrumb and Sentry (or any other OTel tool) run in parallel without interfering with each other.

import * as Sentry from "@sentry/node";
import { init } from "@breadcrumb-sdk/core";
import { initAiSdk } from "@breadcrumb-sdk/ai-sdk";

// Sentry works as usual
Sentry.init({ dsn: process.env.SENTRY_DSN });

// Breadcrumb works alongside it - no conflicts
const bc = init({
  apiKey: process.env.BREADCRUMB_API_KEY!,
  baseUrl: process.env.BREADCRUMB_BASE_URL!,
});
const { telemetry } = initAiSdk(bc);

Sentry traces HTTP requests. Breadcrumb traces LLM calls. Neither tool sees the other's spans.

Shared provider with Langfuse

If you're migrating from Langfuse and want to run both tools during the transition, use createBreadcrumbSpanProcessor to add Breadcrumb to a shared OpenTelemetry provider.

import { createBreadcrumbSpanProcessor } from "@breadcrumb-sdk/core";
import { initAiSdk } from "@breadcrumb-sdk/ai-sdk";
import { LangfuseSpanProcessor } from "@langfuse/otel";
import { NodeTracerProvider } from "@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node";

// Create a shared provider with both processors
const provider = new NodeTracerProvider({
  spanProcessors: [
    createBreadcrumbSpanProcessor({
      apiKey: process.env.BREADCRUMB_API_KEY!,
      baseUrl: process.env.BREADCRUMB_BASE_URL!,
    }),
    new LangfuseSpanProcessor(),
  ],
});

// Pass the shared tracer to initAiSdk
const bc = init({
  apiKey: process.env.BREADCRUMB_API_KEY!,
  baseUrl: process.env.BREADCRUMB_BASE_URL!,
});
const { telemetry } = initAiSdk(bc, {
  tracer: provider.getTracer("ai"),
});

Every AI SDK span flows to both Breadcrumb and Langfuse. Remove the Langfuse processor when you're done migrating.

Custom tracer

For full control over which OTel provider handles AI SDK spans, pass a custom tracer to initAiSdk:

const { telemetry } = initAiSdk(bc, {
  tracer: yourProvider.getTracer("ai"),
});

This overrides the default tracer. Breadcrumb's manual bc.trace() and bc.span() continue to work independently regardless of which tracer the AI SDK uses.

Default setup

Shared provider with Langfuse

Custom tracer

On this page