Every session emits a trace: the visible record of what the agent did and why. Where memory is the durable state a session preserves, the trace is the observability layer on top of it - prompts, decisions, tool calls, files touched, in order.
When you'd open it
Section titled “When you'd open it”- Live - check what an agent is doing right now, mid-run.
- Replay - walk back through what the agent did and why, after the fact.
- Hand-off - share the trace with a teammate so they pick up the reasoning, not just the diff.
- Reference - a new session reads a prior session's trace to inherit context.
What gets captured
Section titled “What gets captured”- Every prompt and agent response.
- Every tool call (file read, command run, MCP call) with arguments and result.
- Every git operation (branches, commits, pushes, PRs).
- Linked references (issues, PRs, sibling sessions).
Viewing the trace
Section titled “Viewing the trace”Each session has a shareable link in the Polygraph web UI that renders the trace timeline. Use polygraph session show --details to dump the relevant fragments to the terminal.