[BOT ISSUE] Anthropic: Server-side tool content blocks (web search, code execution) not decomposed into tool spans

[braintrust-bot]

Summary

When the Anthropic Messages API returns content blocks from server-side tools (server_tool_use, web_search_tool_result, code_execution_tool_result), the Braintrust wrapper logs them as part of the flat message.content array in the LLM span's output. No child TOOL spans are created for these server-executed tool invocations.

The usage-level metrics for server tools (server_tool_use_web_search_requests, server_tool_use_web_fetch_requests, server_tool_use_code_execution_requests) are properly captured — this gap is specifically about the lack of span-level visibility into individual server-side tool executions and their results.

What is missing

The _log_message_to_span() function (py/src/braintrust/integrations/anthropic/tracing.py, line 490) logs the entire message.content array as a single output blob:

output = {
 "role": getattr(message, "role", None),
 "content": getattr(message, "content", None), # All content blocks, flat
 ...
}
span.log(output=output, metrics=metrics, metadata=metadata)

When Anthropic server-side tools are used, message.content contains interleaved blocks like:

Content block type	Description	Child TOOL span created?
server_tool_use	Server-side tool invocation (search query, code to execute)	No
web_search_tool_result	Web search results with URLs, titles, encrypted content	No
code_execution_tool_result	Code execution output (stdout, stderr, files)	No
text (with citations)	Text with citation references to search results	No

Each server_tool_use + *_tool_result pair represents a complete server-side tool invocation that could be a child TOOL span with its own input (the query/code), output (the results), and metadata (tool_use_id, error codes).

Comparison with other integrations in this repo

The Google GenAI integration (py/src/braintrust/integrations/google_genai/tracing.py) creates dedicated SpanTypeAttribute.TOOL child spans for equivalent server-side tool outputs:

• code_execution_call / code_execution_result
• file_search_call / file_search_result
• url_context_call / url_context_result
• mcp_server_tool_call / mcp_server_tool_result

Test coverage

The unit tests in test_anthropic.py validate that server_tool_use metrics are correctly extracted from the usage object (lines 170-282). However, there are no end-to-end tests (or VCR cassettes) that exercise a full server-side tool invocation and verify span-level output. The cassettes/ directory contains no recordings with server_tool_use or web_search_tool_result content blocks.

Braintrust docs status

supported (partial) — The Anthropic integration page documents server_tool_use_* metrics. It does not mention tool span decomposition for server-side tool content blocks.

Upstream sources

• Anthropic web search tool documentation: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/tool-use/web-search-tool
  • Tool types: web_search_20250305, web_search_20260209 (with dynamic filtering)
  • Response content blocks: server_tool_use (query) + web_search_tool_result (results with URLs, titles, encrypted_content)
  • Citations: text blocks with citations array containing web_search_result_location entries
• Anthropic code execution tool documentation: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/tool-use/code-execution-tool
  • Tool type: code_execution_20250825
  • Response content blocks: server_tool_use (code) + code_execution_tool_result (stdout, stderr, files)
• Both tools are GA and available on all supported Claude models

Local files inspected

• py/src/braintrust/integrations/anthropic/tracing.py:
  • _log_message_to_span() (line 490) — logs entire message.content as flat output, no content block type inspection
  • Streaming path uses accumulate_event() then same _log_message_to_span() — same flat treatment
• py/src/braintrust/integrations/anthropic/_utils.py:
  • extract_anthropic_usage() (line 56) — properly captures server_tool_use metrics (web_search_requests, web_fetch_requests, code_execution_requests)
• py/src/braintrust/integrations/anthropic/test_anthropic.py — tests validate metrics extraction only; no end-to-end cassettes for server-side tools
• py/src/braintrust/integrations/anthropic/cassettes/ — no cassettes with server-side tool content blocks
• py/src/braintrust/integrations/google_genai/tracing.py (lines 771-838) — creates SpanTypeAttribute.TOOL child spans for equivalent tool outputs (for comparison)

[AbhiPrasad]

released with https://github.com/braintrustdata/braintrust-sdk-python/releases/tag/py-sdk-v0.15.0