Agent Performance

Diagnose Your Agent's Production Behavior

This skill is a production diagnostician. It reads the real traffic, not the code, and answers: what is my agent actually doing out there, where is it failing, who is it annoying, and where is the money going. It is read-only on the platform: the only thing it writes is a report file.

Step 1: Set up the LangWatch CLI

Step 2: Baseline the Vital Signs

Establish the macro picture first, always comparing against the previous period (the analytics API returns both periods for every query):

langwatch status                                                  # Resource counts and project overview
langwatch analytics query --metric trace-count --format json      # Volume trend, last 7 days
langwatch analytics query --metric total-cost --format json       # Spend trend
langwatch analytics query --metric avg-latency --format json      # Latency trend
langwatch analytics query --metric p95-latency --format json      # Tail latency
langwatch analytics query --metric total-tokens --format json     # Token consumption
langwatch analytics query --metric eval-pass-rate --format json   # Quality trend, if evaluators exist

Then slice the same metrics to find WHERE the numbers come from:

langwatch analytics query --metric total-cost --group-by metadata.model --format json
langwatch analytics query --metric trace-count --group-by metadata.labels --format json
langwatch analytics query --metric p95-latency --group-by metadata.model --format json

Widen with --start-date (ISO) to 30 days when trends look suspicious: a gradual drift only shows on longer windows. Run langwatch analytics query --help for every preset and flag.

An empty metric is a coverage note, never the end of the road. An empty eval-pass-rate means there were no evaluator runs in the selected window; it says nothing about the traffic itself, which trace-count, total-cost, and the latency metrics still describe. For an open "what has my agent been up to?", answer from whichever sources HAVE data, production traces first, then simulation runs: share a few concrete observations (volume, the kinds of requests coming in, errors, cost or latency movements, one or two example traces), then end with one short line inviting the user to name what to dig into more deeply ("Say which of these to dig into and I'll go deeper."). Never end the conversation on "no evaluation data" alone when the project has traces.

Step 3: Export the Evidence and Mine It

Aggregates say WHAT changed; only the traces say WHY. Export a large sample and analyze it locally:

langwatch trace export --format jsonl --limit 1000 --origin application -o traces.jsonl
langwatch trace export --format jsonl --limit 1000 --origin application --start-date <30d-ago> --end-date <14d-ago> -o traces-before.jsonl

--origin application scopes the sample to real production traffic (it includes traces with no recorded origin). Evaluation, simulation, playground, gateway, and langy traces would pollute the picture of what the agent does for users; include those origins (comma-separated) only when they are the subject of the question.

Write small local scripts (python3 or jq) over the JSONL to compute, at minimum:

1. Failure patterns: cluster error traces by error message and by input shape. Which user intents fail most?
2. Dissatisfied users: traces with negative feedback or angry language in inputs ("this is wrong", "that's not what I asked", repeated rephrasing of the same question in a thread). Check annotations on candidate traces too: thumbs down and reviewer comments are gold.
3. Token and cost hotspots: distribution of tokens per trace; the p99 tail; which metadata slice (model, label, user) concentrates the spend; prompts that balloon context.
4. Edge cases: inputs far from the common distribution (very long, empty, non-primary language, unusual formats) and how the agent handled them.
5. Behavior changes: compare the recent window against the older export: output length, tool usage mix, model mix, refusal rate, latency. Anything that moved, find the first day it moved.
6. Outliers: the single weirdest traces by duration, cost, span count, and output size. Read them individually.

langwatch trace search --errors-only --origin application --limit 25 --format json  # Every failure, without guessing at text
langwatch trace search -q "<one phrase from a pattern>" --origin application --limit 10 --format json   # Chase a specific pattern
langwatch trace get <traceId>                                                   # Read a representative trace in full
langwatch trace get <traceId> -f json                                           # Every span, token count, and timing

For every pattern you claim, keep 2-3 example trace IDs as evidence. Never report a pattern without example traces behind it.

Step 4: Build the Report

Write a single self-contained agent-performance-report.html in the project root (inline CSS, no external assets) with:

• Executive summary: the 3-5 findings that matter, each one sentence with its magnitude ("34% of errors come from date parsing on non-English inputs")
• One section per finding: the metric evidence (small tables, before/after numbers), what it means, and links to example traces so every claim is verifiable in one click
• A cost breakdown section, a reliability section, and a user-satisfaction section, even when healthy: say what was checked and that it looks fine
• A closing "recommended next steps" section ranked by impact

Trace links: langwatch trace get returns the platform URL for each trace; use those URLs directly. Anyone on the project team can open them.

Open the report path for the user and also summarize the top findings directly in the conversation, leading with the numbers.

Step 5: Hand Off to Improvement

If the agent-improve skill is installed, offer it as the next step: it turns each finding into tested hypotheses, scenario tests, evaluators, and PR-ready changes. It writes to the platform, which this skill does not, so run it only once the user says to. Pass along the report: agent-improve uses these findings and trace examples as its evidence base.

Common Mistakes

• Do NOT modify the agent's code, prompts, or any platform resource; this skill is read-only plus one report file
• Do NOT report a pattern without linked example traces; unverifiable claims are worthless
• Do NOT rely on aggregates alone; always read at least a handful of full traces per finding, the surprise is always in the details
• Do NOT analyze only the happy window; without a before/after comparison you cannot see behavior change
• Do NOT dump raw JSON at the user; the deliverable is the diagnosis and the report, written in plain language with numbers
• Do NOT stop at an empty evaluation metric; when evaluations have no data, the answer comes from the traces (and simulation runs), with a closing invitation to dig deeper
• Do NOT mix origins blindly; questions about production behavior are answered from --origin application traffic
• If the CLI returns an error, report the user-facing consequence (what couldn't be determined and why in plain terms), not the raw error text. An activity card already shows the underlying failure