---

name: retellai-observability description: | Set up comprehensive observability for Retell AI integrations with metrics, traces, and alerts. Use when implementing monitoring for Retell AI operations, setting up dashboards, or configuring alerting for Retell AI integration health. Trigger with phrases like "retellai monitoring", "retellai metrics", "retellai observability", "monitor retellai", "retellai alerts", "retellai tracing". allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit version: 1.0.0 license: MIT author: Jeremy Longshore jeremy@intentsolutions.io

Retell AI Observability

Overview

Set up comprehensive observability for Retell AI integrations.

Prerequisites

• Prometheus or compatible metrics backend
• OpenTelemetry SDK installed
• Grafana or similar dashboarding tool
• AlertManager configured

Metrics Collection

Key Metrics

Prometheus Metrics

Copyimport { Registry, Counter, Histogram, Gauge } from 'prom-client';

const registry = new Registry();

const requestCounter = new Counter({
  name: 'retellai_requests_total',
  help: 'Total Retell AI API requests',
  labelNames: ['method', 'status'],
  registers: [registry],
});

const requestDuration = new Histogram({
  name: 'retellai_request_duration_seconds',
  help: 'Retell AI request duration',
  labelNames: ['method'],
  buckets: [0.05, 0.1, 0.25, 0.5, 1, 2.5, 5],
  registers: [registry],
});

const errorCounter = new Counter({
  name: 'retellai_errors_total',
  help: 'Retell AI errors by type',
  labelNames: ['error_type'],
  registers: [registry],
});

Instrumented Client

Copyasync function instrumentedRequest<T>(
  method: string,
  operation: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<T> {
  const timer = requestDuration.startTimer({ method });

  try {
    const result = await operation();
    requestCounter.inc({ method, status: 'success' });
    return result;
  } catch (error: any) {
    requestCounter.inc({ method, status: 'error' });
    errorCounter.inc({ error_type: error.code || 'unknown' });
    throw error;
  } finally {
    timer();
  }
}

Distributed Tracing

OpenTelemetry Setup

Copyimport { trace, SpanStatusCode } from '@opentelemetry/api';

const tracer = trace.getTracer('retellai-client');

async function tracedRetell AICall<T>(
  operationName: string,
  operation: () => Promise<T>
): Promise<T> {
  return tracer.startActiveSpan(`retellai.${operationName}`, async (span) => {
    try {
      const result = await operation();
      span.setStatus({ code: SpanStatusCode.OK });
      return result;
    } catch (error: any) {
      span.setStatus({ code: SpanStatusCode.ERROR, message: error.message });
      span.recordException(error);
      throw error;
    } finally {
      span.end();
    }
  });
}

Logging Strategy

Structured Logging

Copyimport pino from 'pino';

const logger = pino({
  name: 'retellai',
  level: process.env.LOG_LEVEL || 'info',
});

function logRetell AIOperation(
  operation: string,
  data: Record<string, any>,
  duration: number
) {
  logger.info({
    service: 'retellai',
    operation,
    duration_ms: duration,
    ...data,
  });
}

Alert Configuration

Prometheus AlertManager Rules

Copy# retellai_alerts.yaml
groups:
  - name: retellai_alerts
    rules:
      - alert: Retell AIHighErrorRate
        expr: |
          rate(retellai_errors_total[5m]) /
          rate(retellai_requests_total[5m]) > 0.05
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Retell AI error rate > 5%"

      - alert: Retell AIHighLatency
        expr: |
          histogram_quantile(0.95,
            rate(retellai_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m])
          ) > 2
        for: 5m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Retell AI P95 latency > 2s"

      - alert: Retell AIDown
        expr: up{job="retellai"} == 0
        for: 1m
        labels:
          severity: critical
        annotations:
          summary: "Retell AI integration is down"

Dashboard

Grafana Panel Queries

Copy{
  "panels": [
    {
      "title": "Retell AI Request Rate",
      "targets": [{
        "expr": "rate(retellai_requests_total[5m])"
      }]
    },
    {
      "title": "Retell AI Latency P50/P95/P99",
      "targets": [{
        "expr": "histogram_quantile(0.5, rate(retellai_request_duration_seconds_bucket[5m]))"
      }]
    }
  ]
}

Instructions

Step 1: Set Up Metrics Collection

Implement Prometheus counters, histograms, and gauges for key operations.

Step 2: Add Distributed Tracing

Integrate OpenTelemetry for end-to-end request tracing.

Step 3: Configure Structured Logging

Set up JSON logging with consistent field names.

Step 4: Create Alert Rules

Define Prometheus alerting rules for error rates and latency.

Output

• Metrics collection enabled
• Distributed tracing configured
• Structured logging implemented
• Alert rules deployed

Error Handling

Examples

Quick Metrics Endpoint

Copyapp.get('/metrics', async (req, res) => {
  res.set('Content-Type', registry.contentType);
  res.send(await registry.metrics());
});

Resources

• Prometheus Best Practices
• OpenTelemetry Documentation
• Retell AI Observability Guide

Next Steps

For incident response, see retellai-incident-runbook.