**Implements**: [SEP-2448: server execution telemetry]
(https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/pull/2448)
**Description:**
**The Observability Gap (The Problem)**
MCP clients propagate trace context to servers, but server-side
execution remains a black box. The client sees a single tools/call or
resources/read span; everything the server does (auth checks, policy
evaluation, API calls, sub-tool invocations) is invisible. In
cross-organization deployments, clients and servers use separate
observability backends with no shared collector access, making
traditional span export useless.
<img width="1015" height="450" alt="Screenshot 2026-03-23 at 3 43 21 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/58c817b5-fee6-46a3-9877-d523a25368ad"
/>
**Server Execution Telemetry (The Solution)**
Servers advertise serverExecutionTelemetry and return a curated slice of
their execution spans directly in _meta.otel of the response. Clients
ingest these verbatim OTLP spans into their own collector, stitching
server-side execution into their distributed trace; no shared
infrastructure required. The black box becomes transparent.
<img width="945" height="574" alt="Screenshot 2026-03-23 at 3 43 44 PM"
src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/38d97c94-aa73-4e62-9b4e-3264600e5ed0"
/>
.
**Summary:**
Implement MCP serverExecutionTelemetry capability that enables
cross-organization distributed tracing by returning server-side
OpenTelemetry spans to clients inline via _meta.otel.traces.
Server-side (middleware):
- TelemetryPassbackMiddleware intercepts tools/call and resources/read
- ContextVarSpanCollector isolates span collection per-request via
ContextVar
- Propagates traceparent from client request for distributed trace
stitching
- Serializes collected spans to verbatim OTLP JSON (resourceSpans
format), directly POSTable to /v1/traces
- Top-level span filtering by default; full span tree via detailed
opt-in
- Middleware advertises capabilities via get_capabilities() on the
Middleware base class
- Provisional API: FutureWarning emitted until SEP-2448 is ratified
Client-side (reference agent):
- LangChain ReAct agent connects to MCP server via
streamable_http_client with OAuth 2.1
- Detects serverExecutionTelemetry capability at initialization
- Dynamically wraps discovered MCP tools with traceparent propagation
and _meta.otel span request
- Ingests returned server spans into Jaeger (OTLP JSON) and Galileo
(OTLP protobuf)
- Two-act demo: --no-passback (black box) vs default (full server-side
visibility)
Dependencies:
- opentelemetry-api and opentelemetry-sdk added to arcade-mcp-server
Bump arcade-mcp-server version to 1.18.0.
78c8e6fb99