Observer and coverage
Install the published observer and understand which browser signals it can see.
The Trace observer runs in your website and records bounded technical evidence about supported tracking activity. Use Installation for the exact generated snippet and Settings → Coverage to understand the current evidence.
Install the published configuration
Review the environment, allowed hosts, collection mode, sampling and destinations before publishing. New installations use strict collection; saved older installations keep their existing policy until deliberately changed.
Copy the returned snippet and install it once, directly or in a GTM tag. It loads the stable /runtime/trace.js entry with your installation’s public key. Do not construct an asset URL or reuse another environment’s public key. If the website uses a Content Security Policy, allow the generated runtime and delivery origins in the appropriate directives; a nonce on the installed script is passed on to the runtime.
Runtime releases then arrive automatically. A new page load uses the current release after up to five minutes of caching, while open tabs keep the version they loaded. A runtime release never changes your published collection settings, and publishing settings remains a separate step.
A website that still loads a versioned runtime URL from before 0.13 shows Enable automatic runtime updates in Installation. Replace that script or GTM tag once with the snippet, publish the website or container, then open a fresh page.
Some collection settings need a newer observer:
A page on an older observer rejects such a configuration and stops sending evidence. Before publishing, Trace compares the version the new configuration needs with the versions that sent evidence in the last 24 hours. If pages still run an older pinned version, a warning names each version and how many pages ran it, and offers Cancel or Publish anyway. Replace the pinned script or GTM tag with the snippet first. Pages that already reject the published configuration send nothing, so the warning cannot count them. Through the CLI, siteos trace installation publish stops with OUTDATED_RUNTIME in the same case, and --acknowledge-outdated-runtime publishes anyway.
After deployment, exercise a known action and check fresh observations and the observed runtime version in Settings → Coverage. A current-version signal does not prove that every page has updated.
If your policy requires consent before Trace starts, set Start collecting to After analytics consent in Settings → Collection (observer 0.9 or later), or gate the snippet through your CMP. The consent-source setting alone only chooses what state Trace observes. See Consent and privacy and Visitor data.
Supported signals
Reports, issues, filters and notifications name each service as SiteOS Cookie does, such as Google Analytics, Meta Pixel or HubSpot tracking.
Strict collection exports built-in vocabulary plus approved names and route templates. A service may appear while an unapproved custom event name is omitted. Review collection settings before expecting that name in Explorer.
Service discovery is always on, with no setting to turn it off. The stable snippet always loads a current observer. A pinned snippet older than 0.8 cannot read a published configuration with discovery and stops sending data until you replace it from Installation.
With service discovery, other cross-site requests and loads are recognized from their hostname alone, for example ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Insight, Microsoft Clarity or Hotjar. Trace stores the recognized service or, when no registry source knows it, only the registrable domain, shown as Not recognized. It never stores the subdomain, path, query or request content, and the observer reports at most 20 services per page view. A recognized service is not necessarily a tracking service, and discovery does not decode its events. Older observers show other external requests as unclassified activity without their hostname.
Read coverage before judging absence
Coverage distinguishes current requests, resources-only evidence, excluded or unsupported providers and historical configurations. Check the last signal, sampling, runtime version and analysis readiness.
Resource loading does not prove SDK initialization. An initiated fetch, accepted beacon or opaque response does not prove delivery failure or successful downstream processing. Supported readable errors can produce technical findings.
A request the browser rejected after the page started to close appears as Request rejected during page exit, with an unknown result. It does not prove the destination failed, and it cannot count toward recovery. HTTP errors and timeouts keep their own classification.
Trace cannot see all traffic inside other-origin frames, workers, server-side integrations or arbitrary first-party proxies. A blocked or late observer can miss earlier activity. Missing observations therefore do not establish zero traffic or healthy tracking.
Inspect with your agent
After selecting the correct Project, these reads leave the installation unchanged:
Use the intended environment slug. Lists return one page with a cursor; keep the same filters when retrieving subsequent pages. For the GTM callback setup, follow Tag Manager.