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Tyk Gateway emits two categories of observability signal for MCP traffic: custom metrics dimensions and structured access log fields. Both signals are enriched with the same set of MCP-specific fields, letting you monitor tool call volumes, track latency per primitive, classify errors, and correlate usage across sessions, through the same observability infrastructure you use for your REST APIs.

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Prerequisites

OpenTelemetry must be enabled on your Tyk Gateway. See OpenTelemetry configuration for setup instructions.

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MCP fields

The following fields are derived from the JSON-RPC payload on each MCP request. They appear across both signal types. All four fields are populated only for MCP requests. For non-MCP requests the fields are empty or absent, so existing metric instruments and log templates are unaffected.

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Observability Signals

Distributed tracing is not currently implemented for MCP traffic. The TRACING_ENABLED configuration flag exists in the gateway but does not generate spans for MCP requests. Use the metrics and access log signals above to correlate and diagnose MCP traffic.

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Dashboard Analytics

Alongside these OpenTelemetry signals, Tyk Dashboard has a dedicated Activity by MCP analytics page, covering proxy-level and primitive-level traffic and error charts. See MCP Analytics.