OpenTelemetry makes GenAI observability a shared contract

Agent products cannot be operated safely if model calls, tool hops, token consumption, and failure modes disappear into vendor-specific logs. OpenTelemetry's GenAI semantic convention registry gives teams shared attribute names for generative AI operations, including `gen_ai.operation.name`, `gen_ai.provider.name`, `gen_ai.request.model`, `gen_ai.response.model`, `gen_ai.tool.call.*`, and `gen_ai.usage.input_tokens` / `gen_ai.usage.output_tokens`. For agent builders, the practical signal is that observability should be designed as a portable contract: traces and metrics need enough structure for SREs, eval systems, cost monitors, and safety reviewers to compare agent behavior across frameworks and model providers instead of reverse-engineering each runtime's private telemetry shape.