AI SDK
Observability Integrations

Respan

Trace and monitor your AI SDK application with Respan

Respan (formerly Keywords AI) is an LLM engineering platform for observability, evaluation, and gateway routing. Respan integrates with the AI SDK to provide:

  • Tracing for each AI SDK call (input, output, token usage, cost, latency)
  • Tool call and structured output capture
  • Optional gateway routing across 250+ models behind a single endpoint

Setup

The AI SDK supports tracing via OpenTelemetry. With the VercelAIInstrumentor from @respan/instrumentation-vercel, traces are exported to Respan automatically.

Install

npm install ai @ai-sdk/openai @respan/respan @respan/instrumentation-vercel

Configure environment variables

.env
RESPAN_API_KEY="your-respan-api-key"

Get your API key from platform.respan.ai.

Initialize Respan

Create instrumentation.ts at the root of your Next.js project:

instrumentation.ts
import { Respan } from '@respan/respan';
import { VercelAIInstrumentor } from '@respan/instrumentation-vercel';

export async function register() {
  const respan = new Respan({
    apiKey: process.env.RESPAN_API_KEY,
    instrumentations: [new VercelAIInstrumentor()],
  });
  await respan.initialize();
}

Then mark the SDK packages as server-external in next.config.ts:

next.config.ts
import type { NextConfig } from 'next';

const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  serverExternalPackages: ['@respan/respan', '@respan/instrumentation-vercel'],
};

export default nextConfig;

Generate text with telemetry enabled

import { openai } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const result = await generateText({
  model: openai('gpt-6-luna'),
  prompt: 'Tell me a joke about AI',
  experimental_telemetry: { isEnabled: true },
});

Spans appear in the Respan traces page with input, output, token usage, and cost.

Gateway routing (optional)

To use Respan as a unified gateway across providers, point your AI SDK provider at the Respan gateway with your RESPAN_API_KEY. For the OpenAI provider, use https://api.respan.ai/api as the base URL. Provider keys are managed in Respan; only the Respan key is needed at runtime.

import { createOpenAI } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const provider = createOpenAI({
  apiKey: process.env.RESPAN_API_KEY!,
  baseURL: 'https://api.respan.ai/api',
});

const result = await generateText({
  model: provider('gpt-5.4-nano'),
  prompt: 'Tell me a joke about AI',
  experimental_telemetry: { isEnabled: true },
});

The same gateway endpoint accepts Anthropic and Google models when used with their respective AI SDK providers (createAnthropic, createGoogleGenerativeAI) and the matching base path (/api/anthropic, /api/google/gemini).

Resources

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