LangChain built SmithDB, a new database just for agent traces in LangSmith
hwchase17 · x · 2026-10-13
LangChain engineer Josh Rosen published an article on agent tracing: logging every model and tool call is easy, but understanding what an agent spent the last hour doing is its own art. To support this, LangChain invented a new database, SmithDB, for LangSmith.
Agent traces break normal database assumptions:
- hundreds of nested spans per trace
- huge prompts and tool outputs
- runs that stay open for hours
- events arriving over time
- full-text search plus JSON filtering requirements
Traditional databases struggle to handle all of these at once, making agent observability a distinct engineering problem.
Related event: LangChain Builds SmithDB, a Purpose-Built Database for Agent Traces(2 posts)→
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