analyzing-mlflow-trace

SKILL.md

Analyzing a Single MLflow Trace

Trace Structure

A trace captures the full execution of an AI/ML application as a tree of spans. Each span represents one operation (LLM call, tool invocation, retrieval step, etc.) and records its inputs, outputs, timing, and status. Traces also carry assessments — feedback from humans or LLM judges about quality.

It is recommended to read references/trace-structure.md before analyzing a trace — it covers the complete data model, all fields and types, analysis guidance, and OpenTelemetry compatibility notes.

Handling CLI Output

Traces can be 100KB+ for complex agent executions. Always redirect output to a file — do not pipe mlflow traces get directly to jq, head, or other commands, as piping can silently produce no output.

# Fetch full trace to a file (traces get always outputs JSON, no --output flag needed)
mlflow traces get --trace-id <ID> > /tmp/trace.json