Tracing | Easel.sh

A request Trace is a span tree for one HTTP request. Easel builds it from platform timing plus any OpenTelemetry (OTEL) spans your function emits.

How to open a Trace

Open the project and go to Logs.
Filter to the time range and path you care about.
Select a request row.
Open the Trace tab in the dock.
Choose Timeline, Tree, or Waterfall.

From Logs detail you can also open the matching invocation when you need the function-level view.

Platform spans

Platform spans include:

Root span for the request method and path
Resolve Deployment and Resolve Route for edge routing
Invoke middleware and Invoke function for compute windows
Nested application OTEL spans under Invoke function when you instrument the runtime

If the function has not emitted OTEL yet, the Trace still shows platform spans. A placeholder under the invoke notes that application spans appear there once instrumentation is present.

Timeline, Tree, and Waterfall

The Trace toolbar shares one span tree across three views:

Timeline: absolute-time lanes with zoom and a minimap
Tree: hierarchy with expand and collapse
Waterfall: indented labels with duration bars

Search spans from the Trace toolbar when the tree is large. Span kinds in the UI include Platform, Framework, Fetch, and Custom.

What a Trace does not replace

Cold start flags and AWS billed duration remain on the request detail panel and on Invocations. Use them together with the Trace:

The Trace shows where time went inside the request
Detail and Invocations show billing and cold-start context for the wake

OpenTelemetry

Instrument your Node.js function with OpenTelemetry so application spans nest under Invoke function. See OpenTelemetry.

Easel collects spans into the request Trace. Customer-managed OTLP export to an external backend is not a separate product feature today.

Invocation Traces

Invocations can show an invocation-level Trace focused on wake lifecycle and per-request summary bars when one wake served multiple requests.