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SideSeat

Vercel AI SDK

Vercel AI SDK is a TypeScript toolkit for building AI applications. SideSeat captures traces from generateText, streamText, and other AI SDK calls via OpenTelemetry.

Quick Start

Section titled “Quick Start”

  1. Install dependencies

    Terminal window
    npm install @sideseat/sdk ai @ai-sdk/openai

  2. Add telemetry

    import { init } from '@sideseat/sdk';
    init();
    

    import { generateText } from 'ai';
    import { openai } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
    

    const { text } = await generateText({
      model: openai('gpt-5-mini'),
      prompt: 'What is the capital of France?',
      experimental_telemetry: { isEnabled: true },
    });
    

    console.log(text);

  3. View runs

    Open http://localhost:5388 to see your runs.

Without SideSeat SDK

Section titled “Without SideSeat SDK”

Use the OpenTelemetry SDK directly:

import { NodeSDK } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-node';
import { OTLPTraceExporter } from '@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http';


const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: 'http://localhost:5388/otel/default/v1/traces',
  }),
});


sdk.start();

Or set the environment variable:

Terminal window
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:5388/otel/default/v1/traces

What You’ll See

Section titled “What You’ll See”

SideSeat shows each generateText/streamText call with the model name, token counts, prompt messages, and the full response. Tool calls appear as child spans.

Streaming

Section titled “Streaming”
import { streamText } from 'ai';
import { openai } from '@ai-sdk/openai';


const result = streamText({
  model: openai('gpt-5-mini'),
  prompt: 'Tell me a story',
  experimental_telemetry: { isEnabled: true },
});


for await (const chunk of result.textStream) {
  process.stdout.write(chunk);
}

Tool Calls

Section titled “Tool Calls”
import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { openai } from '@ai-sdk/openai';
import { z } from 'zod';


const { text } = await generateText({
  model: openai('gpt-5-mini'),
  prompt: 'What is the weather in Paris?',
  tools: {
    getWeather: tool({
      description: 'Get weather for a location',
      parameters: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
      execute: async ({ location }) => `Sunny in ${location}`,
    }),
  },
  experimental_telemetry: { isEnabled: true },
});

Next Steps

Section titled “Next Steps”