Observe traffic
Metrics, OpenTelemetry traces, usage records, and audit events from Orca AI Gateway.
The gateway is the one place every model and tool call passes through, which makes it the natural place to answer questions about them. It emits four distinct kinds of signal, and they answer different questions.
| Signal | Answers | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|
| Prometheus metrics | Is the gateway healthy, and how much is flowing | GET /metrics on the admin plane |
| OpenTelemetry traces | Why was this request slow, and which attempt served it | An OTLP collector |
| Usage records | Who spent what, on which model | A usage sink |
| Audit events | What decision did each policy make, and on what content | An audit sink |
Telemetry
Prometheus metrics and OpenTelemetry GenAI spans.
Usage and audit
Per-request cost records and policy-decision audit events.
Signed tapes
The implemented file format, verifier, and current live-capture limitation.
Metrics without any configuration
The admin plane serves Prometheus metrics as soon as the gateway is running, with no plugin to configure:
curl -fsS http://localhost:9099/metrics | grep orca_gatewayThe Helm chart sets Prometheus scrape annotations by default and can create a ServiceMonitor when
metrics.serviceMonitor.enabled is set.
Sink delivery behavior
Usage sinks deliver through bounded background queues. When a queue and optional durable spool are
full, the sink drops and counts the record rather than waiting on the request path. stdout writes
through the process logger. Audit sinks run on their caller's path: Kafka audit waits for its
producer send, while file, stdout, and ext_proc write through their own sink implementation.
Do not rely on a usage or audit sink, whatever its failure_mode, for a regulatory "record or
reject" requirement.
Usage sink kinds are stdout, kafka, postgres, and registry; postgres requires the
usage-postgres feature, enabled by default in the CLI binary. Audit sink kinds are noop,
stdout, file, kafka, and ext_proc. See Usage and audit
for delivery and durability behavior.