Product / UX / Telemetry & observability

Axon

Local observability tool for LangChain and OpenTelemetry-instrumented AI agents. A single CLI-launched server ingests OTLP trace data and serves a real-time React dashboard with transcript, waterfall, tree and raw span views, writing everything to a local SQLite database. No cloud account is required and no trace data leaves the machine it runs on.

The CLI, backend and dashboard packages it bundles all ship in the same MIT-licensed repository and run entirely on the developer's machine. The @axon-ai/cli npm package is declared as a measurement artifact because installing it installs and runs the product - the CLI launches the backend and serves the dashboard - so its download count is Axon's own usage rather than a client's or a component's. Verified 2026-09-02 via the langchain-tracer/Axon repository.

Openness

5 high confidence

5.0

license: MIT(OSI, single root LICENSE)
source: public(the CLI, backend server and dashboard all ship in this repository as three npm workspaces that run entirely on the developer's own machine)
core-gated: ungated(no hosted service, account or paid tier exists at all)

A fully local tool - no cloud account, no hosted backend, nothing withheld. The README states directly that "no cloud account is required and no data leaves your environment," and the repository is a three-package monorepo (CLI, backend, dashboard) that together are the whole product.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/langchain-tracer/Axon/main/LICENSE recorded 2026-09-02
MIT License text, Copyright 2026 Axon, the sole license file in the repository.
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/langchain-tracer/Axon/main/README.md recorded 2026-09-02
Opens: "Axon is a local observability tool for LangChain and OpenTelemetry-instrumented AI agents. It receives trace data from your application, stores it on your machine, and gives you a real-time dashboard ... No cloud account is required and no data leaves your environment." Distributed as three packages - @axon-ai/cli, @axon-ai/backend, @axon-ai/dashboard - that install together.
https://api.github.com/repos/langchain-tracer/Axon/git/trees/main?recursive=1 recorded 2026-09-02
The whole repository tree, 166 paths, including packages/cli, backend and dashboard. No ee/, enterprise or license-key path exists; the only LICENSE is the root MIT file.

Adoption

1 high confidence

1.0

The CLI package @axon-ai/cli draws 186 npm downloads a month, well inside the <10K band. 159 GitHub stars on a repository created in late 2025 corroborate a small, young project without setting the band.

https://api.npmjs.org/downloads/point/last-month/@axon-ai/cli recorded 2026-09-02
downloads: 186 for @axon-ai/cli, 2026-07-31 to 2026-08-29
https://api.github.com/repos/langchain-tracer/Axon recorded 2026-09-02
stargazers_count = 159, forks_count = 12, created_at 2025-10-13, pushed_at 2026-08-06

Capability

2 high confidence

2.0

A trace viewer and nothing more: a single-purpose local dashboard for inspecting OTLP spans already emitted by another instrumentation library. It has no evaluation, prompt management, dataset or cost-tracking surface at all, which is narrower than even the openllmetry/monocle instrumentation layers in this category - those at least emit and route traces across many providers, where Axon only visualizes what is handed to it. Two rungs below the Langfuse anchor at 4.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/langchain-tracer/Axon/main/README.md recorded 2026-09-02
Feature list is entirely visualization: Overview, Transcript, Waterfall, Tree and Raw trace views, backed by a local SQLite database; the "How it works" section describes only OTLP ingestion and dashboard serving, with no evaluation, prompt or dataset section.

Verified 2026-09-02