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feat(develop): Add distributed tracing for MCP #15752

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14 changes: 14 additions & 0 deletions develop-docs/sdk/expected-features/mcp-instrumentation/tracing.mdx
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Expand Up @@ -174,3 +174,17 @@ Describes MCP notification messages (one-way messages that don't expect a respon
- The `mcp.method.name` attribute MUST be set to the notification method. (e.g. `"notifications/cancelled"`)
- All [Common Span Attributes](#common-span-attributes) SHOULD be set (all `required` common attributes MUST be set).

## Distributed Tracing

Traces should be continued when a client makes a tool call request to an MCP server and both the client and server are instrumented. To do so, we inject both the trace parent (sentry-trace) and baggage into the `_meta` field of the request, and pick these up on the server. The tracing metadata attached in the `_meta` field is the same as the metadata contained in HTTP headers in HTTP-based trace continuation.

The SDK must respect any existing metadata in `_meta`. If previously empty, the `_meta` field must have the form

```json
"_meta": {
"sentry-trace": "...",
"baggage": "...",
}
```

where "sentry-trace" is analogous to the [`sentry-trace` HTTP header](/sdk/telemetry/traces/#header-sentry-trace) and "baggage" is analogous to [`baggage` HTTP header](/sdk/telemetry/traces/dynamic-sampling-context/#baggage-header).
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@cleptric cleptric Dec 10, 2025 •
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Maybe we can already think about how we can support mixed OTLP/Sentry instrumentation here. As in, can we rely on the traceparent header instead of our sentry-tace header?
Also, which options should define if we perform propagation? tracePropagationTargets or something new?

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