# Welcome to Etiq

## Etiq Core

Etiq Core is a in-depth observability framework for agent, copilot or human-created code. It builds a causal graph of your code by tracing lineage objects back to the functions that produced them, so developers and agents can verify outputs, catch coding mistakes, and reduce hallucinations.

* deterministic lineage built from code and execution artifacts, not LLM-generated claims
* runtime execution and graph generation, going beyond static analysis 
* low tracing overhead
* no manual instrumentation
* support for data, ML/AI pipelines, agent builds, and large codebases
* deployment through library functions, VS Code extension, and Jupyter Notebook extension

For coding agents, Etiq provides a causal view of what actually happened when agents modify code, run tools, and generate artifacts across multiple steps. It does this without requiring the user or the agent to manually instrument the code.

### Where does Etiq sit in the observability stack?

Coding-agent observability usually has three parts: what the agent intended, what the platform observed, and what the generated code actually did. Etiq focuses on the third part.

### Observability Layers

| Layer                   | What it shows                                                                 | Typical tools or records                                           |
| ----------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Orchestration and state | What the agent planned, which steps it took, and what final outputs it stored | agent state, memory, tool records, artifact stores                 |
| Runtime telemetry       | What the platform observed during execution                                   | traces, logs, metrics, spans, HTTP calls, subprocesses, exit codes |
| Code execution lineage  | Which functions produced or transformed interim lineage objects               | Etiq lineage graph, captured dataframes, models, agent states      |

Etiq answers questions the other layers usually cannot: which function produced this dataframe, model, or output; which interim lineage object was wrong; and what should be tested before trusting the final result.

### Why Etiq Adds A Separate Layer

Agent orchestration can show what the agent planned and which tools it invoked. Runtime telemetry can show that code ran and which external calls happened. Etiq fills the gap inside the executed code by tracing interim lineage objects and their producer functions.

That makes Etiq useful for:

* granular verification of data and AI pipelines
* targeted debugging when an interim step is wrong
* auditability across the lineage of data, models, and generated outputs
* coding agents with longer task horizons and multi-step code execution

Etiq does not replace orchestration, memory, artifact storage, or OpenTelemetry. It adds causal traceability for the code the agent runs.

### Supported Stack

Supported stack areas include:

* python
* Spark
* SQL

The core workflow is:

1. Point Etiq at a python entry file.
2. Scan the code.
3. Retrieve lineage and captured states.
4. Inspect datasets, models, agents, and graph output.

### Pages

* [Quickstart](/quickstart.md)
* [Core Concepts](/core-concepts.md)
* [Scan Outputs](/working-with-scan-results.md)
* [Agent Instruction](/agent-instruction.md)


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# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

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