Concepts

Four terms. One hierarchy. Everything in PromptLayer maps to this model.

Request

A single provider/model call — one row in the request explorer.

Trace

A complete execution run containing one or more requests, grouped by trace_id.

Span

An individual execution step within a trace — set via span in the SDK (step_name in the API).

Workflow

A reusable orchestration definition used to group related traces (e.g. customer_support).

Hierarchy

Workflow
└── Trace
    ├── Span
    │   └── Request
    ├── Span
    │   └── Request
    └── Span
        └── Request

In the SDK, you name the workflow when starting a trace. Each trace.request() adds a span. The waterfall view shows spans in execution order with timing gaps between them.