Redaction policies

Axiom AI SDK provides flexible redaction policies to control what data is captured in OpenTelemetry spans. This allows you to balance observability needs with privacy and compliance requirements.

Built-in redaction policies

Axiom AI SDK provides two built-in redaction policies:

If you don’t specify a redaction policy, Axiom AI SDK applies AxiomDefault.

To determine which redaction policy fits your needs, see the following comparison:

What gets captured

To determine which redaction policy fits your needs, see the following examples about what gets captured with each defaultpolicy:

{
  "gen_ai.operation.name": "chat",
  "gen_ai.request.model": "gpt-4o-mini",
  "gen_ai.input.messages": "[{\"role\":\"user\",\"content\":[{\"type\":\"text\",\"text\":\"Hello, how are you?\"}]}]",
  "gen_ai.output.messages": "[{\"role\":\"assistant\",\"content\":\"I'm doing well, thank you for asking!\"}]",
  "gen_ai.usage.input_tokens": 12,
  "gen_ai.usage.output_tokens": 15,
  "gen_ai.usage.total_tokens": 27
}

{
  "gen_ai.tool.name": "weather_lookup",
  "gen_ai.tool.description": "Get current weather for a location",
  "gen_ai.tool.arguments": "{\"location\":\"San Francisco\",\"units\":\"celsius\"}",
  "gen_ai.tool.message": "{\"temperature\":18,\"condition\":\"partly cloudy\"}"
}

{
  "gen_ai.operation.name": "chat",
  "gen_ai.request.model": "gpt-4o-mini",
  "gen_ai.usage.input_tokens": 12,
  "gen_ai.usage.output_tokens": 15,
  "gen_ai.usage.total_tokens": 27
}

{
  "gen_ai.tool.name": "weather_lookup",
  "gen_ai.tool.description": "Get current weather for a location"
}

Global configuration

Set a default redaction policy for your entire app using initAxiomAI:

import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api';
import { initAxiomAI, RedactionPolicy } from 'axiom/ai';

const tracer = trace.getTracer("my-tracer");

initAxiomAI({ tracer, redactionPolicy: RedactionPolicy.AxiomDefault });

import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api';
import { initAxiomAI, RedactionPolicy } from 'axiom/ai';

const tracer = trace.getTracer("my-tracer");

initAxiomAI({ tracer, redactionPolicy: RedactionPolicy.OpenTelemetryDefault });

Per-operation override

You can configure different policies for each operation. Axiom resolves redaction policies in the following order (from highest to lowest precedence):

1. Per-operation policy
2. Global policy
3. Default policy

Override the global or default policy for specific operations by passing a redactionPolicy to withSpan:

import { withSpan, RedactionPolicy } from 'axiom/ai';
import { generateText } from 'ai';

const result = await withSpan(
  { capability: 'customer_support', step: 'handle_sensitive_query' },
  async (span) => {
    span.setAttribute('user.id', userId);
    return generateText({
      model: wrappedModel,
      prompt: 'Process this sensitive customer data...'
    });
  },
  { redactionPolicy: RedactionPolicy.OpenTelemetryDefault }
);

Custom redaction policies

Create custom policies by defining an AxiomAIRedactionPolicy object:

import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api';
import { initAxiomAI, AxiomAIRedactionPolicy } from 'axiom/ai';

const tracer = trace.getTracer("my-tracer");

// Custom policy: capture messages but not tool payloads
const customPolicy: AxiomAIRedactionPolicy = {
  captureMessageContent: 'full',
  mirrorToolPayloadOnToolSpan: false
};

initAxiomAI({ tracer, redactionPolicy: customPolicy });

The AxiomAIRedactionPolicy object has two properties:

The built-in policies configure the AxiomAIRedactionPolicy object in the following way:

Related documentation