Langfuse Observability Plugin

This plugin ships bundled with Hermes but is opt-in — it only loads when you explicitly enable it.

Enable

Pick one:

bash

# Interactive: walks you through credentials + SDK install + enable
hermes tools  # → Langfuse Observability

# Manual
pip install langfuse
hermes plugins enable observability/langfuse

Required credentials

Set these in ~/.hermes/.env (or via hermes tools):

bash

HERMES_LANGFUSE_PUBLIC_KEY=pk-lf-...
HERMES_LANGFUSE_SECRET_KEY=sk-lf-...
HERMES_LANGFUSE_BASE_URL=https://cloud.langfuse.com   # or your self-hosted URL

Without the SDK or credentials the hooks no-op silently — the plugin fails open.

Verify

bash

hermes plugins list                 # observability/langfuse should show "enabled"
hermes chat -q "hello"              # then check Langfuse for a "Hermes turn" trace

Generation observations include the Hermes system prompt when the provider uses a separate system param (Anthropic Messages API). Open an LLM call child span to inspect role: system (truncated via HERMES_LANGFUSE_MAX_CHARS).

Optional tuning

bash

HERMES_LANGFUSE_ENV=production       # environment tag
HERMES_LANGFUSE_RELEASE=v1.0.0       # release tag
HERMES_LANGFUSE_SAMPLE_RATE=0.5      # sample 50% of traces
HERMES_LANGFUSE_MAX_CHARS=12000      # max chars per field (default: 12000)
HERMES_LANGFUSE_CAPTURE=sanitized    # content capture mode (see below)
HERMES_LANGFUSE_DEBUG=true           # verbose plugin logging

Capture modes

HERMES_LANGFUSE_CAPTURE controls how much content (prompts, responses, tool arguments/results) is exported. Structural metadata — IDs, roles, tool names, token usage, cost, timing — is always captured in every mode.

mode	behavior
`metadata`	No content. Each content field is replaced by a shape/size stub (`{"omitted": true, "type": "text", "chars": N}`).
`sanitized`	(default) Content is exported after secret-pattern redaction (API keys, tokens, JWTs, private keys, `password=`-style assignments) and truncation. Redaction runs before truncation.
`full`	Raw content, truncated only. Explicit opt-in — traces will contain whatever passed through the conversation, including injected memory and file contents.

The active mode is recorded on every trace as metadata.capture_mode.

Note: sanitized is pattern-based defense in depth, not a DLP guarantee. For personal sessions or shared Langfuse projects, prefer metadata.

Error + shutdown coverage

Failed model requests (api_request_error hook) close their generation with level=ERROR, status code, retry counters, and a capture-mode-scrubbed error message. Non-retryable failures also finish the turn trace.
Session end/finalize closes any still-open traces for that session and flushes queued events, so interrupted or tool-only turns don't dangle.

Disable

bash

hermes plugins disable observability/langfuse