---
title: "Introducing: Extended Traces"
description: "Inngest Traces now captures every nested API requests, database query, and 3rd party libraries."
date: 2025-11-12
author: ["Charly Poly"]
url: https://www.inngest.com/blog/introducing-extended-traces
---

We are thrilled to release [Extended Traces](/docs/platform/monitor/traces#extended-traces), a new way to augment your Inngest Traces with database transaction information, 3rd-party requests, and more! Now available in public beta [in our TypeScript SDK](/docs/reference/typescript/extended-traces).

From shipping business-critical to AI workflows, we know that observability is key in building a reliable back-end. Inngest Traces is part of our [strong commitment to better observability](https://www.inngest.com/blog/announcing-inngest-series-a), from making them available locally in the [Inngest DevServer](https://www.inngest.com/docs/local-development), to [adding AI Traces](https://www.inngest.com/blog/ai-orchestration-with-agentkit-step-ai), and now extending them to third-party libraries and providers with the Open Telemetry standard.

## Introducing Extended Traces

Developers often rely on error messages or step-level logs to debug their workflows. But what happens inside those steps—database queries, HTTP requests, or LLM API calls—remains a black box. Without visibility into these nested operations, pinpointing failures or performance bottlenecks can be time-consuming and frustrating.

Extended Traces solves this by **automatically capturing [OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/) spans** from within your Inngest functions. Now, you can:

- **Track every database query** (e.g., Prisma operations)
- **Monitor third-party API calls** (e.g., Resend, Stripe, or custom integrations)
- **Visualize nested spans** for a detailed performance overview of 3rd party libraries
- **Extend it** if needed by providing a custom traces provider

![Extended Traces in the Inngest Dev Server](/assets/blog/introducing-extended-traces/image.png)

## How it works

Enabling extended traces for all outgoing HTTP requests and Prisma database queries only requires a few lines of code:

```ts
import { Inngest } from "inngest";
import { extendedTracesMiddleware } from "inngest/experimental";
import { PrismaInstrumentation } from "@prisma/instrumentation";

const extendedTraces = extendedTracesMiddleware({
  instrumentations: [new PrismaInstrumentation()],
});

export const inngest = new Inngest({
  id: "extended-traces-demo",
  name: "Extended Traces Demo",
  middleware: [extendedTraces],
});
```

Once enabled, Extended Traces surfaces detailed spans alongside your existing workflow traces. For example, in the screenshot below, you can see:

- Prisma operations, including connection, query execution, and serialization
- Nested spans for AI/LLM calls (e.g., token usage, model details)
- A `fetch` call to an external API (Resend)

With Extended Traces, you can:

- **Locate failures** in third-party APIs or database queries
- **Measure the performance** of individual steps in great detail
- **Correlate spans** with your workflow steps for end-to-end visibility

## What's Next?

Observability shouldn't stop at your workflow steps. With Extended Traces, you can finally see—and fix—what's happening under the hood.

Extended Traces is currently in **public beta**. We're actively gathering feedback to improve the feature and expand support for more libraries and use cases. Try it out and [let us know what you think](https://www.inngest.com/discord)!

## Join the Conversation

- [Tweet about Extended Traces](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=http%3A%2F%2Finngest.com%2Fblog%2Fintroducing-extended-traces)
- [Share on LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/sharing/share-offsite/?url=http%3A%2F%2Finngest.com%2Fblog%2Fintroducing-extended-traces)
- [Discuss on Discord](https://www.inngest.com/discord)