LLM Observability in Production: Practitioners Need Signal, Not Dashboards

In production LLM systems, observability is fundamentally about signal quality, not dashboard aesthetics.

Practitioners need three things:

1. Correlation IDs across request spans — trace a single user request end-to-end through your infrastructure
2. Selective instrumentation — log only what changes outcomes, not every transaction
3. Per-tenant cost metering — know which customers are burning your LLM budget

These patterns hold across production teams I've worked with. They're vendor-agnostic and work at scale.

Read the full synthesis: https://chipper-blancmange-b11fb2.netlify.app