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xAI Grok → OpenObserve

Automatically capture token usage, latency, and model metadata for every xAI Grok inference call in your Python application. xAI exposes an OpenAI-compatible API, so instrumentation uses the standard OpenAI instrumentor pointed at the xAI endpoint.

Prerequisites

  • Python 3.9+
  • An OpenObserve account (cloud or self-hosted)
  • Your OpenObserve organisation ID and Base64-encoded auth token
  • An xAI API key

Installation

pip install openobserve-telemetry-sdk openinference-instrumentation-openai openai python-dotenv

Configuration

Create a .env file in your project root:

# OpenObserve instance URL
# Default for self-hosted: http://localhost:5080
OPENOBSERVE_URL=https://api.openobserve.ai/

# Your OpenObserve organisation slug or ID
OPENOBSERVE_ORG=your_org_id

# Basic auth token — Base64-encoded "email:password"
OPENOBSERVE_AUTH_TOKEN=Basic <your_base64_token>

# xAI API key
XAI_API_KEY=your-xai-api-key

Instrumentation

Call OpenAIInstrumentor().instrument() before creating the OpenAI client. Point the client at the xAI base URL and pass your xAI API key.

from dotenv import load_dotenv
load_dotenv()

from openinference.instrumentation.openai import OpenAIInstrumentor
from openobserve import openobserve_init

OpenAIInstrumentor().instrument()
openobserve_init()

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    api_key=os.environ["XAI_API_KEY"],
    base_url="https://api.x.ai/v1",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="grok-3-mini",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain distributed tracing in one sentence."}],
)
print(response.choices[0].message.content)

What Gets Captured

Attribute Description
llm_model_name Model name (e.g. grok-3-mini)
llm_provider xai
llm_system openai (the client library used)
llm_token_count_prompt Tokens in the prompt
llm_token_count_completion Tokens in the response
llm_token_count_total Total tokens consumed
llm_token_count_completion_details_reasoning Reasoning tokens used (for reasoning models)
llm_token_count_prompt_details_cache_read Prompt tokens served from cache
openinference_span_kind LLM
operation_name ChatCompletion
duration End-to-end request latency
span_status OK or error status

Viewing Traces

  1. Log in to OpenObserve and navigate to Traces
  2. Click any span to inspect token counts and the full request payload
  3. Filter by llm_model_name to compare Grok model versions side by side

xAI Grok trace in OpenObserve

Next Steps

With xAI Grok instrumented, every inference call is recorded in OpenObserve. From here you can monitor latency per model version, track token usage, and set alerts on error spans.

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