NVIDIA NeMo Relay makes an AI agent’s execution path inspectable: it records lifecycle events around model calls, tool calls, and other work, then projects those events into formats for debugging, trajectory review, or observability backends. A trace can help explain how an agent reached an answer, but it does not prove the task succeeded; that requires a separate verifier. Relay instruments execution boundaries—it does not choose the agent’s plan or replace its framework.
What NeMo Relay does—and what it does not do
NVIDIA describes Relay as a shared runtime for scopes, policy, plugins, and lifecycle events. It sits around execution units such as a session, turn, LLM call, tool call, or subagent run. Through instrumentation, middleware, plugins, and events, it exposes or controls those boundaries while leaving application logic and orchestration with the surrounding application or framework. NVIDIA’s tutorial and the Relay overview describe this division of responsibility.
In its Support and FAQs documentation, NVIDIA states: “NeMo Relay does not choose the next step, schedule a multi-agent workflow, own a planner, or decide which tool an agent should call.” Relay is therefore not an agent orchestrator, model provider, prompt-authoring product, vector database, hosted tracing service, or full agent workbench. NVIDIA’s FAQs explain the product boundaries.
Where an integration fits
The appropriate integration depends on where the work happens and which component owns it. Relay documentation describes a local CLI sidecar, direct SDK instrumentation for application-owned calls, maintained framework integrations, wrappers, and plugins. The overview outlines these choices; Relay does not take over the application’s orchestration in any of them.
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What NeMo Relay traces contain
Relay’s canonical event format is ATOF (Agent Trajectory Observability Format) 0.1. It represents work with two kinds of events: scopes and marks. A scope has a start and end and represents timed work, such as an agent, tool, or LLM call. Its start and end pair by UUID, while parent UUIDs preserve the relationship between nested work. A mark is a point-in-time checkpoint, not a timed pair. Relay-generated timestamps are used by default. The events documentation defines these semantics.
Depending on configuration and the exported projection, trace data may include prompts, model responses, tool arguments and results, file paths, timing, identifiers, and error information. The formats are not interchangeable: an export may omit information or represent it differently from the underlying event stream.
Choose an output format for the question you need to answer
| Format | Best suited to | What it represents |
|---|---|---|
| ATOF JSONL | Debugging or auditing individual events | Event-level record with timing, IDs, parent-child relationships, scopes, and marks. |
| ATIF | Reviewing or evaluating an agent’s trajectory | Step-by-step trajectory assembled from lifecycle events. It omits marks because its model is trajectory steps, not independent checkpoints. |
| OpenTelemetry, including OpenInference projection | Sending telemetry to an OTLP-compatible observability system | Spans and related telemetry. In NVIDIA’s tutorial, Phoenix is used to inspect model and tool calls, duration, token use, errors, and available inputs and outputs. The tutorial also names LangSmith as an OTLP-compatible destination. |
Relay’s event-format documentation describes event and projection behavior. For a backend view, NVIDIA’s tutorial demonstrates Phoenix. These destinations are optional; an observability backend is not a prerequisite for Relay.
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How to tell whether a tool call succeeded
A trajectory’s tool request shows what the model asked to run; it does not establish that the tool completed successfully. To inspect the recorded outcome, find the corresponding ATOF tool scope and examine its start and end events, along with any error data. The scope UUID pairs the boundaries, and parent UUIDs show how the tool call fits into its parent work. Then compare the recorded execution with a separate task verifier: a tool can run without achieving the requested result, and a trace alone is not a success check.
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In a Hermes Agent tutorial published September 30, 2026, NVIDIA demonstrates a verified terminal-tool run. The runner checks for the exact expected output VALUE=42, confirms completed LLM activity and zero tool errors, and verifies that ATOF and ATIF artifacts exist. NVIDIA reports 74 ATOF events, two completed LLM scopes, 7,239 prompt tokens, 96 completion tokens, 7,335 total tokens, one tool call, zero tool errors, and three ATIF steps for that run. These are results from that tutorial run, not general performance guarantees; NVIDIA notes that token counts, identifiers, and file paths can vary between runs. The tutorial gives the example and its qualifications.
Why compare runs instead of trusting one result
In a larger case study, NVIDIA reports an August 6, 2026 rerun of Hermes ToolPerf across nine tasks, comparing pinned baseline and fixes arms. Each task was run three times per model per arm, for 108 runs total. A task verifier measured completion while Relay ATOF captured model calls, tool calls, errors, retries, result data, and timing. NVIDIA’s tutorial reports these results:
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| Model and measure | Baseline | Fixes |
|---|---|---|
| Claude Sonnet 4.5: task completion | 24/27 tasks (89%) | 23/27 tasks (85%) |
| Claude Sonnet 4.5: mean duration | 16 s | 22 s |
| Qwen3 Coder 30B: task completion | 19/27 tasks (70%) | 22/27 tasks (81%) |
| Qwen3 Coder 30B: mean LLM calls | 3.8 | 4.9 |
| Qwen3 Coder 30B: mean tool calls | 2.8 | 3.9 |
| Qwen3 Coder 30B: mean tool-result data | 16 KB | 33 KB |
| Qwen3 Coder 30B: mean duration | 27 s | 42 s |
In this sample, the fixes changed little for Sonnet, while Qwen completed three more tasks out of 27 and also used more calls, returned more tool-result data, and took longer on average. Task-level audits showed why aggregate success alone was incomplete: recovering from a blocked command improved completion but required more turns; case-insensitive search triggered extra exploratory searches on some repetitions; and a hidden-file search failure remained unresolved. These results illustrate a particular harness, model set, and workload—not a general prediction for other agents.
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NVIDIA recommends treating task completion as the primary outcome and traces as evidence for diagnosing the path behind it. For a useful comparison:
- Define an exact automated success check. Specify what output or state proves that the task is complete.
- Set a baseline and one focused change. Isolating the change makes it easier to connect an outcome to a prompt, tool, or harness adjustment.
- Hold conditions constant. Keep the model snapshot, provider, task input, execution budget, and timeout the same for both arms.
- Repeat both arms equally. Compare repeated runs rather than relying on a single favorable result.
- Compare verified outcomes first. Then use traces to inspect calls, retries, errors, elapsed time, token use, and cost.
- Repeat across intended workloads or models. A result for one model or task set does not establish that a change will help elsewhere.
A faster run or a lower call count on its own does not establish an optimization: it may also fail more often or behave differently on repeated inputs. The verifier answers whether the task passed; the trace helps explain the behavior that produced that result. NVIDIA’s comparison guidance uses this distinction.
Protect trace data before sharing it
Because traces may contain prompts, responses, tool arguments and results, file paths, and other application data, treat exported artifacts as potentially sensitive. Review and sanitize them before sharing, and account for the selected exporter’s behavior: marks remain in ATOF but are omitted from ATIF, while OpenTelemetry projections may represent event data differently. NVIDIA’s tutorial cautions about trace contents, and the events documentation describes the format distinctions.
Which exporter should you use?
- Use ATOF JSONL when you need the underlying event-level record to investigate timing, IDs, nesting, marks, and recorded outcomes.
- Use ATIF when a step-by-step trajectory is the useful view for review or evaluation, and independent mark events are not needed.
- Use OpenTelemetry or an OpenInference projection when you want spans and related telemetry in an OTLP-compatible observability system; check the projection and backend to understand which payloads and event details are retained.
The integration point is a separate choice: use the path that fits ownership of the real work—CLI sidecar, SDK, framework integration, wrapper, or plugin. Before selecting an export or sharing traces, consider whether it retains the marks and payload details you need, what data can be sanitized, and whether the accompanying evaluation uses fixed inputs and task verification rather than trace volume or one-run speed.
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