# Anatomy of a trace

DevFeed: [Anatomy of a trace](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/anatomy-of-a-trace-17774.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://encore.dev/blog/anatomy-of-a-trace>)

Author: Ivan Cernja

Published: 2026-03-02T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Encore Updates](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/encore-updates.md>)

Topics: [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tracing.md>), [Traces](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/traces.md>), [telemetry](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/telemetry.md>), [API](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/api.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [Cache](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/cache.md>), [Remote Procedure Call (RPC)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/rpc.md>), [HTTP](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/http.md>), [SQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/sql.md>), [Authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/authentication.md>)

Tags: [api](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/api.md>), [authentication](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/authentication.md>), [cache](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/cache.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [distributed](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed.md>), [http](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/http.md>), [request](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/request.md>), [rpc](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/rpc.md>), [sql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sql.md>), [trace](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/trace.md>), [tracing](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tracing.md>)

## AI overview

This article explains how distributed traces are built as requests move through services and operations. It describes root and child spans, trace IDs, automatic context propagation, and the operation-specific data captured by Encore's runtime, including API calls, RPCs, database queries, cache writes, and outbound HTTP calls.

## Source excerpt

What actually happens when a request hits your application, and what a distributed trace captures at every step.