Amp

Amp

Amp is an agentic coding tool that runs locally or in cloud executors called Orbs. The Dash0 agent plugin sends an OpenTelemetry trace for each completed Amp turn, with paired tool calls and best-effort model and token usage. Dash0 links those sessions to the pull requests they help ship. Engineering leaders and platform teams see in one place how widely Amp is used, what it costs, and what it delivers.

Use Cases

• Cost visibility: Track spend by user, team, and model so you can understand and control what Amp costs.
• Adoption tracking: Follow active users, new adopters, and usage distribution to see how Amp rolls out across your engineering teams.
• Productivity signals: Correlate sessions, tool calls, and assisted pull requests to understand the impact Amp has on your team's output.

Overview

The Dash0 agent plugin uses Amp's native plugin API to send completed turns and paired tool calls as OpenTelemetry traces. It works locally and in Orbs. Dash0 prices reported tokens to show cost. Prompt, response, and tool content stays redacted by default. See Data collected and privacy.

Prerequisites

• Amp installed and authenticated on macOS, Linux, or Windows, on amd64 or arm64.
• A Dash0 auth token with ingest permissions.
• Your name and email in your git configuration. The plugin uses them to attribute activity to users:

git config --global user.name "{{user_full_name}}"
git config --global user.email "{{user_email}}"

Install the plugin

Plugin repository, recommended

Amp syncs personal and workspace plugin repositories to every executor, including Orbs. Add the plugin once without installing anything inside an Orb:

amp clone user-plugins && cd user-plugins
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dash0hq/dash0-agent-plugin/main/install-amp.sh | bash -s -- --plugin-repo .
git add dash0-agent-plugin && git commit -m "Add the Dash0 plugin" && git push

For an admin-led team rollout, use amp clone workspace-plugins instead and work in workspace-plugins. On Windows, use Git Bash or WSL for this route. The PowerShell installer does not support --plugin-repo.

Never put credentials in the plugin repository, which you commit and push. The installer refuses --token in this mode and writes no credential file. Configure environment variables as described below.

Local-only installer

If you only run Amp on your own computer, use the installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dash0hq/dash0-agent-plugin/main/install-amp.sh | bash

On Windows:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dash0hq/dash0-agent-plugin/main/install-amp.ps1 | iex

The installer checks the helper against the release checksums, prompts for connection details, and writes ~/.amp/dash0-agent-plugin.local.md with mode 600 on Unix. This installs the plugin on that machine only.

Configure

Plugin repositories and Orbs

Set these environment variables in Amp's personal settings, or in workspace settings for a team rollout:

AMP_PLUGIN_OPTION_OTLP_URL={{endpoint_otlp_http}}
AMP_PLUGIN_OPTION_AUTH_TOKEN={{token_ingestion}}
AMP_PLUGIN_OPTION_DATASET={{dataset}}

Personal values take precedence over project values, which take precedence over workspace values. Plugin repository sync does not deliver credentials to Orbs, so configure them separately here.

Local credential file

The local installer writes the file for you. To change it, ask Amp to run the dash0:dash0-configure skill and enter:

• OTLP URL: {{endpoint_otlp_http}}
• Auth token: {{token_ingestion}}
• Dataset, optional: {{dataset}}

The user-level file is ~/.amp/dash0-agent-plugin.local.md. For one project, use .amp/dash0-agent-plugin.local.md instead. Keep credential files out of Git and restrict their permissions to mode 600 on Unix. Project configuration replaces the user-level file; AMP_PLUGIN_OPTION_* values override file settings.

Attribute Usage by Team (Optional)

Dash0 breaks Amp activity down by user and model without extra setup. To break it down by team as well, enter a team name when you run the dash0:dash0-configure skill, or set team_name in the configuration file. For Orbs, set AMP_PLUGIN_OPTION_TEAM_NAME=<your team> in Amp's environment variables. The plugin sends it as dash0.team.name on every span.

Verify

1. Reload plugins from Amp's command palette. Check that amp plugins list shows dash0-agent-plugin.
2. Send a prompt that uses a tool and let the turn finish. Allow up to twenty seconds for its trace to appear in Dash0's AI Coding section. The root is a chat span, with execute_tool <Name> children for paired tool calls.

Execute mode needs time for plugins to finish loading:

amp --plugin-ready-timeout 30 -x 'task'

Token accounting is enabled by default and needs working Amp authentication on the executor. It reads usage through amp threads export and can take up to twenty seconds after the turn ends. If usage is unavailable, lifecycle traces still arrive without model or token counts. Token counts are useful for trends and relative comparison, not invoicing. Amp's public export omits background subagent calls and auxiliary-model work. This is a data-source limitation, not a plugin defect. Server-side tools that emit no plugin hooks have no tool spans.

If no traces arrive, check the endpoint, token, dataset permissions, and executor configuration. See the plugin reference for troubleshooting and compatibility limits.

Uninstall

From your plugin repository, remove the plugin and push the change:

git rm -r dash0-agent-plugin && git commit -m "Remove the Dash0 plugin" && git push

For a local install, run uninstall-amp.sh, or uninstall-amp.ps1 on Windows. The local uninstaller also removes the user-level credential file. Reload plugins afterwards.

Data collected and privacy

The plugin sends spans over OTLP/HTTP to your configured endpoint with your auth token and, when set, the Dash0-Dataset header. Spans include git identity, repository, branch, commit, working directory, team, tool names, and available model and token usage. Standard identity and VCS attributes follow the shared exporter settings.

With the default omit_io: true, prompt, response, and tool input/output content is replaced with <REDACTED>. Set omit_io: false in the credential file only if you want to send that text. Content is truncated, not scrubbed for secrets, so prompts, file contents, and command output can expose sensitive data. Amp's bridge always drops thinking blocks, inline image payloads, and image URLs. Exporter settings cannot restore them.

With omit_user_info: true, the exporter hashes user.name, drops user.email, and replaces your home directory in the working directory with ~. Use omit_identity_fallback: true to omit the OS account name fallback. The plugin writes no transcript or event log. Avoid debug files on shared hosts when content capture is enabled, because they can contain that content in plaintext.

References

• Dash0 agent plugin for Amp
• Amp plugins documentation
• Amp Orbs documentation
• OpenTelemetry GenAI semantic conventions