> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://docs.layerlens.ai/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://docs.layerlens.ai/7.-observe-see-whats-happening/workflow.md).

# Observe (workflow)

Stage 2 — Observe. See real production behavior across surfaces.

Stage 2. With traces flowing in, **observe** what your AI is actually doing in production.

## The question this stage answers

*"What is my AI doing — and where is it surprising me?"*

## What to do

1. **Browse the trace list.** Filter by tags, by time range, by span errors. Look for outliers.
2. **Drill into a sampled subset.** Pick 20-30 traces from different time slices; read them.
3. **Tag patterns.** When you find an interesting trace shape (a known good, a known bad, an edge case), tag it. Tags become the foundation of your test set.
4. **Notice latency and cost outliers.** Span-level latency and cost surface in the trace inspector.

## What you'll have at the end

* A working sense of what production looks like
* A small tagged set of "interesting" traces — your starter trace set for evaluation
* Hypotheses about where quality might drift

## Don't yet

* Don't define gates yet — you don't have enough signal
* Don't optimize prompts yet — you'll be optimizing on hunches

## Where to next

* [Compare →](/7.-observe-see-whats-happening/workflow.md)
* [Stratix Premium — Traces](/7.-observe-see-whats-happening/traces.md)
* [Concept: Traces and spans](/6.-build-wire-your-code/traces-and-spans.md)
* [Continuous evaluation (concept)](/7.-observe-see-whats-happening/continuous-evaluation.md)