> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.molesignal.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Traces

> Browse traces and spans, inspect request trees, and analyze services from one trace workspace.

Open **Traces** to move between individual spans, complete traces, the service graph, and the
service catalog.

## Browse spans and traces

Use the **Spans** tab for a known operation, service, status, or attribute. Use the **Traces** tab to
review one row per request with duration, span count, and error count.

The query editor supports field filters and SQL against the trace stream. Common fields include:

* `trace_id`, `span_id`, and `parent_span_id`;
* `service.name` and operation name;
* duration and status;
* deployment, host, HTTP, RPC, database, and object-store attributes.

## Inspect a trace

Select a result to open the trace detail page. The tree shows parent/child structure, critical
timing, errors, events, links, and bounded attributes.

Use trace detail to:

* find the slowest or failing span;
* distinguish service time from downstream time;
* open logs carrying the same `trace_id`;
* compare service and operation behavior in the selected window;
* preserve request and session context during an investigation.

If a browser RUM session contains a session identifier, open **Session traces** to review related
backend requests.

## Service graph and catalog

The **Service Graph** tab derives nodes and edges from trace spans. The graph displays request rate, error
rate, and latency relationships without a separately maintained topology.

The **Service Catalog** groups observed services and operations for navigation from a service to
current traces.

## Intake and propagation

Send traces with OTLP HTTP or OTLP gRPC. MoleSignal preserves standard W3C Trace Context and
OpenTelemetry semantic attributes. Response headers expose `X-Request-Id` and `X-Trace-Id` for
supported application requests.

## Permissions

An organization workspace requires `streams.query`. Platform administrators use
`sys.telemetry.read` for the protected `_sys` telemetry scope.

<CardGroup cols={2}>
  <Card title="Application performance monitoring" icon="gauge-high" href="/en-US/apm">
    Analyze RED metrics, transactions, dependencies, errors, and deployments derived from spans.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Service map" icon="diagram-project" href="/en-US/service-map">
    Understand topology derived from cross-service parent and child spans.
  </Card>

  <Card title="Backend distributed tracing" icon="wave-square" href="/en-US/self-observability">
    Operate MoleSignal's own tracing and tail-sampling pipeline.
  </Card>
</CardGroup>