Duplicate traces for sub-tool calls (like seeing the same tool span twice) often occur when both auto-instrumentation and manual instrumentation (e.g., decorators) are applied simultaneously, or when multiple instrumentors are active for the same function/class. This can cause Phoenix to register the same operation more than once, resulting in duplicate spans for tools or internal function calls. The official guidance is to use either auto-instrumentation or manual decorators, but not both for the same code path, to avoid this issue. Additionally, ensure that only one relevant instrumentor is active for each library or function鈥攗sing both, for example, LlamaIndex and OpenAI instrumentors together can also cause double-counting or duplicate spans (<https://github.com/Arize-ai/phoenix/issues/5590|source>, <https://docs.arize.com/phoenix/tracing/how-to-tracing/setup-tracing/instrument-python|source>).
To resolve this, review your code and remove redundant decorators or instrumentors, ensuring each function or tool is only instrumented once. If you want to track sub-tool calls, use decorators only on those specific functions and avoid global auto-instrumentation for the same library. Would you like a step-by-step example of how to configure this correctly?
Sources:
- <https://github.com/Arize-ai/phoenix/issues/5590|Phoenix Issue: Double Counting and Duplicate Spans>
- <https://docs.arize.com/phoenix/tracing/how-to-tracing/setup-tracing/instrument-python|Phoenix Docs: Instrument Python>
