Observe and export AI usage

Last validated:

Aperture by Tailscale is currently in beta.

Aperture captures telemetry for every LLM request, including token counts, model names, session grouping, and tool use data. You can access this data through the Aperture dashboard or export it for integration with external monitoring and compliance tools. For more information on what Aperture captures and how session tracking works, refer to How Aperture works.

You can also connect Aperture with external services such as log aggregators and authorization engines. Refer to Integrate with external tools for available integrations.

Retention

You control how long Aperture keeps captured data through the database.retention configuration. The duration field sets how long request and response bodies are kept before Aperture purges them. Set require_export to true to purge captures only after they have been successfully exported to S3-compatible storage.

To run Aperture with zero data retention, set duration to "0". Request and response bodies are then never written to disk, or are purged immediately after export. Aperture still preserves metrics for each request (token counts, model, cost estimate, duration, and status code), so the dashboard continues to show usage and cost analytics. Combine zero retention with S3 export and require_export to keep a durable record off the Aperture host without storing bodies locally. For step-by-step instructions, refer to Configure zero-retention mode.

Connector observability. MCP tool calls that an LLM initiates appear in captures as part of the LLM request and response bodies (the tool_use and tool_result content blocks). You can view these in the Logs page like any other request detail.

HTTP connector proxy requests (traffic to /v1/connectors/{id}/) do not appear in the dashboard or in captures. There is currently no customer-visible record of these requests. Refer to Connectors for more information on configuring MCP and HTTP connectors.


Reference for the pages every Aperture user can access in the dashboard, organized by sidebar group, including My Dashboard, Agent Config, Models, Connectors, Chat, and Usage Overview.

Reference for admin-only Aperture dashboard pages, grouped by sidebar section, including Security, Administration, Usage & Adoption, Integrations, and API Docs.

Configure Aperture to export LLM usage data to an Amazon S3 bucket for analysis, archiving, and long-term retention.

Configure Aperture so it never stores prompt and response content on disk, to minimize data at rest and meet strict internal or contractual data-handling requirements.