AWS X-Ray

Name: AWS X-Ray API
Brand: AWS X-Ray
Availability: InStock

★ Only Publicly Available OpenAPI DocumentDeveloper ToolsMonitoring ObservabilityapiKey30 EndpointsREST

For Agents

Ingest application trace data and query service maps, traces, and insights so an agent can investigate latency and errors across distributed AWS services.

Connect the AWS X-Ray to your agent

Jentic One is a self-hosted execution layer for AI agents. It lets your agent call the AWS X-Ray, or any other public or private API you need. You set the rules, the agent never sees your credentials, and every call is logged.

Install Jentic One Beta (Self-Hosted)

Jentic One Host machine

# On the machine that will host your Jentic One instance:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh

Agent machine

# On the machine where your agent runs (keep this separate from the instance):
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jentic/jentic-one/main/tools/install.sh | sh
jentic register       # connects your agent to your Jentic One instance

Jentic One is in public beta. The setup above keeps your agent separate from the instance, which is what you want before using real credentials: an agent running as the same OS user as Jentic One can read its stored keys directly. Just evaluating? A single local install is fine to start. See the secure deployment guide for the tiers.

Capabilities

What an agent can do with AWS X-Ray API.

Ingest application trace segments via PutTraceSegments and telemetry via PutTelemetryRecords

Search traces by filter expression and time range with GetTraceSummaries

Retrieve full traces (with sub-segments) via BatchGetTraces

Render the service map and trace graph for visualisation with GetServiceGraph and GetTraceGraph

GET STARTED

Start building with AWS X-Ray API

Explore with Jentic

View OpenAPI Document

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI document for AWS X-Ray, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

Jentic publishes the only available OpenAPI specification for AWS X-Ray, keeping it validated and agent-ready. AWS X-Ray collects distributed traces from applications running on EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, and API Gateway, then surfaces the request path through every downstream service as a service map and per-trace timeline. The API ingests trace segments and telemetry, queries traces by ID or filter expression, returns service graphs and time-series statistics, and manages sampling rules, groups, and resource policies. The 30 operations span PutTraceSegments / PutTelemetryRecords for ingestion, BatchGetTraces and GetTraceSummaries for query, GetServiceGraph and GetInsight for analysis, and full CRUD on groups and sampling rules.

Use Cases

Patterns agents use AWS X-Ray API for, with concrete tasks.

★ Latency Investigation Across Microservices

When p99 latency spikes, use GetTraceSummaries with a filter expression like 'service("checkout") AND responsetime > 2' over the relevant time window to find the offending traces, then BatchGetTraces with the returned TraceIds to inspect sub-segments and pinpoint the slow downstream call. GetServiceGraph in parallel surfaces which service-to-service edge is degraded.

Call GetTraceSummaries with FilterExpression 'service("checkout") AND responsetime > 2', StartTime 30 minutes ago, EndTime now, and TimeRangeType 'TraceId', then BatchGetTraces with the first 5 returned TraceIds.

Cost-Aware Trace Sampling

Reduce X-Ray spend by raising sampling rates only for important paths. CreateSamplingRule defines rules that match by ServiceName, ServiceType, Host, HTTPMethod, URLPath, and ResourceARN, with a Reservoir (fixed traces per second) and a FixedRate (proportion of remaining traffic). UpdateSamplingRule adjusts the rule live without code changes; GetSamplingRules lists all active rules.

Call CreateSamplingRule with RuleName 'checkout-high', Priority 100, ReservoirSize 5, FixedRate 0.2, ServiceName 'checkout', URLPath '/checkout', and HTTPMethod 'POST'.

Service Health Insights

X-Ray Insights automatically detects anomalies in service-level error rates and latency. ListInsightSummaries enumerates open insights; GetInsight returns the root-cause analysis; GetInsightImpactGraph shows the user-impact graph; GetInsightEvents returns the time series of impact. Together they produce a richer signal than raw metrics for SRE on-call review.

Call ListInsightSummaries with States ['ACTIVE'], then for each InsightId call GetInsight and GetInsightImpactGraph and return the affected services.

Agent-Driven Trace Triage via Jentic

An on-call agent investigating a paged alert can query X-Ray through Jentic without holding AWS keys. The agent submits an intent like 'find slow traces in the last 30 minutes for the checkout service'; Jentic loads GetTraceSummaries, executes it with a filter expression, and returns the offending TraceIds; the agent then calls BatchGetTraces for the timeline detail. The agent context never sees a SecretAccessKey.

Through Jentic, search for 'find slow traces in aws xray', load GetTraceSummaries, and execute with FilterExpression and TimeRange.

Key Endpoints

30 endpoints — jentic publishes the only available openapi specification for aws x-ray, keeping it validated and agent-ready.

METHOD

PATH

DESCRIPTION

POST

/Traces

Batch get traces by trace ID

POST

/TraceSummaries

Search traces by filter expression

POST

/ServiceGraph

Get the service map graph

POST

/TraceSegments

Submit trace segment documents

POST

/CreateSamplingRule

Create a sampling rule

POST

/InsightSummaries

List insight summaries

POST

/Traces

Batch get traces by trace ID

POST

/TraceSummaries

Search traces by filter expression

POST

/ServiceGraph

Get the service map graph

POST

/TraceSegments

Submit trace segment documents

POST

/CreateSamplingRule

Create a sampling rule

Why though Jentic?

Three things that make agents converge on Jentic-routed access.

Credential isolation

AWS access keys for AWS X-Ray (used to compute the AWS Signature v4 HMAC in the Authorization header) are held encrypted in the Jentic vault. Agents receive scoped, short-lived execution permissions; the raw access key ID and secret access key never enter the agent's prompt or memory.

Intent-based discovery

Agents call Jentic with an intent like 'find slow traces in aws xray' and Jentic returns the matching AWS X-Ray operation along with its input schema, so the agent can invoke the right action without parsing AWS service docs.

Time to first call

Direct integration with AWS X-Ray: 2-4 days to wire up SigV4 signing, error handling, retries, and IAM scoping. Through Jentic: under an hour — search by intent, load the operation schema, execute.

Related APIs

Alternatives and complements available in the Jentic catalogue.

Complementary

Amazon CloudWatch

CloudWatch supplies metrics and alarms; X-Ray supplies the per-request distributed traces behind those metrics.

Use CloudWatch for metrics and alarming; jump to X-Ray when you need per-request detail.

Complementary

Amazon CloudWatch Logs

CloudWatch Logs holds the log lines that X-Ray traces correlate to via trace IDs.

Pivot from an X-Ray trace to the matching CloudWatch Logs entries via the trace ID for full debug context.

Complementary

AWS CloudTrail

CloudTrail audits AWS API calls; X-Ray traces the application requests that triggered them.

Use X-Ray for application-level latency and CloudTrail for AWS-control-plane attribution.

FAQs

Specific to using AWS X-Ray API through Jentic.

Why is there no official OpenAPI spec for AWS X-Ray?

AWS does not publish an OpenAPI specification for AWS X-Ray; it ships Smithy models and language-specific SDKs instead. Jentic generates and maintains this OpenAPI spec so that AI agents and developers can call AWS X-Ray via structured tooling. It is validated against the live API and kept up to date. Get started at https://app.jentic.com/sign-up.

What authentication does AWS X-Ray use?

X-Ray uses AWS SigV4 in the Authorization header. The IAM principal needs xray:PutTraceSegments and xray:PutTelemetryRecords for ingestion and xray:Get* / xray:BatchGet* for query. Through Jentic, your AWS keys are vaulted and Jentic signs each request.

Can I search traces by HTTP status code or service name?

Yes. GetTraceSummaries accepts a FilterExpression in X-Ray's filter syntax: clauses like 'service("checkout")', 'http.status >= 500', and 'responsetime > 2' can be combined with AND/OR. The TimeRangeType selector controls whether you query by trace start time or by event time.

What are the rate limits for AWS X-Ray?

PutTraceSegments has a default ingestion rate of around 250,000 segments per second per account but is metered per trace; query APIs (GetTraceSummaries, BatchGetTraces) have lower per-second quotas. Sampling rules are the primary cost lever — fewer sampled traces means fewer ingestion charges.

How do I find slow traces through Jentic?

Search Jentic with 'find slow traces in aws xray', load GetTraceSummaries, and execute with FilterExpression 'responsetime > 2', StartTime, and EndTime. Jentic returns TraceSummaries; pass the TraceIds into BatchGetTraces for full timelines.

Can I control how many traces X-Ray records?

Yes. Sampling rules combine a Reservoir (fixed traces per second) with a FixedRate (fraction of remaining matching requests). CreateSamplingRule, UpdateSamplingRule, and DeleteSamplingRule manage them; GetSamplingTargets returns the live targets for instrumented clients.

Does X-Ray work with Lambda and API Gateway out of the box?

Yes. Lambda and API Gateway can emit X-Ray segments when active tracing is enabled in their configuration; this API is then used to query the resulting traces and service map. Custom applications use the X-Ray daemon or OpenTelemetry to emit segments via PutTraceSegments.