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Dspy Debugging Observability Agent Skill

Use for debugging DSPy programs, inspect_history, tracing LLM calls, custom callbacks, observability, monitoring, and cost tracking.

2k tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
2
files
ships runnable scripts
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
119
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository
npx skills add https://github.com/OmidZamani/dspy-skills --skill dspy-debugging-observability

What comes with it

221 bytes besides the instruction
example.py

The instruction itself

14 sections, as written by the author

DSPy Debugging & Observability

Goal

Debug, trace, and monitor DSPy programs using built-in inspection, MLflow tracing, and custom callbacks for production observability.

When to Use

  • Debugging unexpected outputs
  • Understanding multi-step program flow
  • Production monitoring (cost, latency, errors)
  • Analyzing optimizer behavior
  • Tracking LLM API usage
  • Optimize programs: dspy-miprov2-optimizer
  • Evaluate quality: dspy-evaluation-suite
  • Build agents: dspy-react-agent-builder

Inputs

| Input | Type | Description |

|-------|------|-------------|

| program | dspy.Module | Program to debug/monitor |

| callback | BaseCallback | Optional custom callback (subclass of dspy.utils.callback.BaseCallback) |

Outputs

| Output | Type | Description |

|--------|------|-------------|

| GLOBAL_HISTORY | list[dict] | Raw execution trace from dspy.clients.base_lm |

| metrics | dict | Cost, latency, token counts from callbacks |

Workflow

Phase 1: Basic Inspection with inspect_history()

The simplest debugging approach:

import dspy

dspy.configure(lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o-mini"))

# Run program
qa = dspy.ChainOfThought("question -> answer")
result = qa(question="What is the capital of France?")

# Inspect last execution (prints to console)
dspy.inspect_history(n=1)

# To access raw history programmatically:
from dspy.clients.base_lm import GLOBAL_HISTORY
for entry in GLOBAL_HISTORY[-1:]:
    print(f"Model: {entry['model']}")
    print(f"Usage: {entry.get('usage', {})}")
    print(f"Cost: {entry.get('cost', 0)}")

Phase 2: MLflow Tracing

MLflow integration requires explicit setup:

import dspy
import mlflow

# Setup MLflow (4 steps required)
# 1. Set tracking URI and experiment
mlflow.set_tracking_uri("http://localhost:5000")
mlflow.set_experiment("DSPy")

# 2. Enable DSPy autologging
mlflow.dspy.autolog(
    log_traces=True,              # Log traces during inference
    log_traces_from_compile=True, # Log traces when compiling/optimizing
    log_traces_from_eval=True,    # Log traces during evaluation
    log_compiles=True,            # Log optimization process info
    log_evals=True                # Log evaluation call info
)

dspy.configure(lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o-mini"))

# Configure retriever (required before using dspy.Retrieve)
rm = dspy.ColBERTv2(url="http://20.102.90.50:2017/wiki17_abstracts")
dspy.configure(rm=rm)

class RAGPipeline(dspy.Module):
    def __init__(self):
        self.retrieve = dspy.Retrieve(k=3)
        self.generate = dspy.ChainOfThought("context, question -> answer")

    def forward(self, question):
        context = self.retrieve(question).passages
        return self.generate(context=context, question=question)

pipeline = RAGPipeline()
result = pipeline(question="What is machine learning?")

# View traces in MLflow UI (run in terminal): mlflow ui --port 5000

MLflow captures LLM calls, token usage, costs, and execution times when autolog is enabled.

Phase 3: Custom Callbacks for Production

Build custom callbacks for specialized monitoring:

import dspy
from dspy.utils.callback import BaseCallback
import logging
import time
from typing import Any

logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)

class ProductionMonitoringCallback(BaseCallback):
    """Track cost, latency, and errors in production."""

    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.total_cost = 0.0
        self.total_tokens = 0
        self.call_count = 0
        self.errors = []
        self.start_times = {}

    def on_lm_start(self, call_id: str, instance: Any, inputs: dict[str, Any]):
        """Called when LM is invoked."""
        self.start_times[call_id] = time.time()

    def on_lm_end(self, call_id: str, outputs: dict[str, Any] | None, exception: Exception | None = None):
        """Called after LM finishes."""
        if exception:
            self.errors.append(str(exception))
            logger.error(f"LLM error: {exception}")
            return

        # Calculate latency
        start = self.start_times.pop(call_id, time.time())
        latency = time.time() - start

        # Extract usage from outputs
        usage = outputs.get('usage', {}) if isinstance(outputs, dict) else {}
        tokens = usage.get('total_tokens', 0)
        model = outputs.get('model', 'unknown') if isinstance(outputs, dict) else 'unknown'
        cost = self._estimate_cost(model, usage)

        self.total_tokens += tokens
        self.total_cost += cost
        self.call_count += 1

        logger.info(f"LLM call: {latency:.2f}s, {tokens} tokens, ${cost:.4f}")

    def _estimate_cost(self, model: str, usage: dict[str, int]) -> float:
        """Estimate cost based on model pricing (update rates for 2026)."""
        pricing = {
            'gpt-4o-mini': {'input': 0.00015 / 1000, 'output': 0.0006 / 1000},
            'gpt-4o': {'input': 0.0025 / 1000, 'output': 0.01 / 1000},
        }
        model_key = next((k for k in pricing if k in model), 'gpt-4o-mini')
        input_cost = usage.get('prompt_tokens', 0) * pricing[model_key]['input']
        output_cost = usage.get('completion_tokens', 0) * pricing[model_key]['output']
        return input_cost + output_cost

    def get_metrics(self) -> dict[str, Any]:
        """Return aggregated metrics."""
        return {
            'total_cost': self.total_cost,
            'total_tokens': self.total_tokens,
            'call_count': self.call_count,
            'avg_cost_per_call': self.total_cost / max(self.call_count, 1),
            'error_count': len(self.errors)
        }

# Usage
monitor = ProductionMonitoringCallback()
dspy.configure(lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o-mini"), callbacks=[monitor])

# Run your program
qa = dspy.ChainOfThought("question -> answer")
for question in questions:
    result = qa(question=question)

# Get metrics
metrics = monitor.get_metrics()
print(f"Total cost: ${metrics['total_cost']:.2f}")
print(f"Total calls: {metrics['call_count']}")
print(f"Errors: {metrics['error_count']}")

Phase 4: Sampling for High-Volume Production

For high-traffic applications, sample traces to reduce overhead:

import random
from dspy.utils.callback import BaseCallback
from typing import Any

class SamplingCallback(BaseCallback):
    """Sample 10% of traces."""

    def __init__(self, sample_rate: float = 0.1):
        super().__init__()
        self.sample_rate = sample_rate
        self.sampled_calls = []

    def on_lm_end(self, call_id: str, outputs: dict[str, Any] | None, exception: Exception | None = None):
        """Sample a subset of LM calls."""
        if random.random() < self.sample_rate:
            self.sampled_calls.append({
                'call_id': call_id,
                'outputs': outputs,
                'exception': exception
            })

# Use with high-volume apps
callback = SamplingCallback(sample_rate=0.1)
dspy.configure(lm=dspy.LM("openai/gpt-4o-mini"), callbacks=[callback])

Best Practices

  • Use inspect_history() for debugging - Quick inspection during development
  • MLflow for comprehensive tracing - Automatic instrumentation in production
  • Sample high-volume traces - Reduce overhead with 1-10% sampling
  • Privacy-aware logging - Redact PII before logging
  • Async callbacks - Non-blocking callbacks for production

Limitations

  • Callbacks are synchronous by default (can block LLM calls)
  • MLflow tracing adds ~5-10ms overhead per call
  • inspect_history() only stores recent calls (last 100 by default)
  • Custom callbacks don't capture internal optimizer steps
  • Cost estimation requires manual pricing table updates

Official Documentation

  • DSPy Documentation: https://dspy.ai/
  • DSPy GitHub: https://github.com/stanfordnlp/dspy
  • Observability Guide: https://dspy.ai/tutorials/observability/

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How to use it

Copy the folder

Take omidzamani/dspy-debugging-observability from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

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