feat(error-tracking): link exceptions to active spans

[hpouillot]

💡 Motivation and Context

Exceptions captured inside instrumented code currently lose their active OpenTelemetry context, which prevents correlation with the trace and span where the exception occurred.

capture_exception now reads a valid active OpenTelemetry span when the optional dependency is available and adds zero-padded $trace_id and $span_id properties. Explicitly supplied properties retain precedence, and exception capture remains unchanged when OpenTelemetry is absent or no valid span is active.

💚 How did you test it?

• uv run --extra test pytest posthog/test/test_client.py -k 'capture_exception' --verbose --timeout=30
• uv run ruff format --check . && uv run ruff check .
• uv run --extra dev --extra test mypy --no-site-packages --config-file mypy.ini . | uv run --extra dev mypy-baseline filter
• uv run make public_api_check
• uv run python -W error -c "import posthog"

📝 Checklist

• I reviewed the submitted code.
• I added tests to verify the changes.
• I updated the docs if needed.
• No breaking change or entry added to the changelog.

If releasing new changes

• Ran sampo add to generate a changeset file

🤖 Agent context

Autonomy: Human-driven (agent-assisted)

Implemented with the Pi coding agent. The active span is read through a lazy OpenTelemetry import so the SDK keeps its optional dependency behavior. Only valid contexts are emitted, identifiers use standard fixed-width lowercase hexadecimal formatting, and caller-supplied values take precedence. A focused branch was created from current main to avoid including unrelated local error-tracking work.

[greptile-apps]

_{Reviews (1): Last reviewed commit: "fix(error-tracking): keep telemetry help..." | Re-trigger Greptile}

[github-actions]

posthog-python Compliance Report

Date: 2026-07-16 10:12:18 UTC
Duration: 337845ms

✅ All Tests Passed!

111/111 tests passed

---

Capture_V1 Tests

✅ 94/94 tests passed

View Details

Test	Status	Duration
Endpoint And Method.Targets V1 Endpoint	✅	516ms
Endpoint And Method.Does Not Use Legacy Endpoints	✅	1009ms
Required Headers.Has Authorization Bearer Header	✅	1010ms
Required Headers.Has Content Type Json	✅	1010ms
Required Headers.Has Posthog Sdk Info Format	✅	1009ms
Required Headers.Has Posthog Attempt Header	✅	1009ms
Required Headers.Has Posthog Request Id	✅	1009ms
Required Headers.Has Posthog Request Timestamp	✅	1009ms
Required Headers.Has User Agent	✅	1010ms
Body Format.Body Has Created At And Batch	✅	1010ms
Body Format.No Api Key In Body	✅	1009ms
Body Format.No Sent At In Body	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Event Has Required Root Fields	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Event Uuid Is Valid	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Event Timestamp Is Rfc3339	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Distinct Id Is String	✅	1010ms
Event Format.Distinct Id At Root Not Properties	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Custom Properties Preserved	✅	1010ms
Event Format.Set Properties Preserved	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Set Once Properties Preserved	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Groups Properties Preserved	✅	1010ms
Event Format.Sdk Generates Uuid If Not Provided	✅	1009ms
Event Format.Event Has Required Root Fields Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Event Uuid Is Valid Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Event Timestamp Is Rfc3339 Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Distinct Id Is String Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Distinct Id At Root Not Properties Batch	✅	1012ms
Event Format.Custom Properties Preserved Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Set Properties Preserved Batch	✅	1014ms
Event Format.Set Once Properties Preserved Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Groups Properties Preserved Batch	✅	1013ms
Event Format.Sdk Generates Uuid If Not Provided Batch	✅	1013ms
Batch Behavior.Multiple Events In Single Batch	✅	1506ms
Batch Behavior.Batch Envelope Smoke	✅	1014ms
Batch Behavior.Flush With No Events Sends Nothing	✅	1005ms
Batch Behavior.Flush At Triggers Batch	✅	1507ms
Batch Behavior.Created At Reflects Batch Creation Time	✅	511ms
Deduplication.Generates Unique Uuids	✅	1507ms
Deduplication.Different Events Same Content Different Uuids	✅	1506ms
Deduplication.Preserves Uuid On Retry	✅	7516ms
Deduplication.Preserves Timestamp On Retry	✅	7512ms
Deduplication.Preserves Uuid And Timestamp On Batch Retry	✅	7512ms
Deduplication.No Duplicate Events In Batch	✅	1504ms
Header Behavior On Retry.Attempt Header Starts At One	✅	1009ms
Header Behavior On Retry.Attempt Header Increments On Retry	✅	14521ms
Header Behavior On Retry.Request Id Preserved On Retry	✅	7506ms
Header Behavior On Retry.Different Requests Have Different Request Ids	✅	3520ms
Header Behavior On Retry.Request Timestamp Changes On Retry	✅	7514ms
Response Format Validation.Success Response Has Uuid Keyed Results	✅	1007ms
Response Format Validation.Success Response Has Ok For Each Event	✅	1506ms
Response Format Validation.Success No Retry After When All Ok	✅	1507ms
Response Format Validation.Success Retry After Present When Retry Events	✅	2510ms
Response Format Validation.Success No Retry After When Drop Only	✅	1507ms
Response Format Validation.Response Echoes Request Id	✅	1010ms
Retry Behavior.Retries On 408	✅	7514ms
Retry Behavior.Retries On 500	✅	7509ms
Retry Behavior.Retries On 503	✅	9518ms
Retry Behavior.Retries On 504	✅	7514ms
Retry Behavior.Retryable Errors Have Retry After	✅	4507ms
Retry Behavior.Respects Retry After On Retryable Error	✅	12517ms
Retry Behavior.Does Not Retry On 400	✅	3503ms
Retry Behavior.Does Not Retry On 401	✅	3509ms
Retry Behavior.Does Not Retry On 402	✅	3507ms
Retry Behavior.Does Not Retry On 413	✅	3507ms
Retry Behavior.Does Not Retry On 415	✅	3507ms
Retry Behavior.Non Retryable Errors Have No Retry After	✅	3507ms
Retry Behavior.Implements Backoff	✅	23517ms
Retry Behavior.Max Retries Respected	✅	23025ms
Partial Batch Handling.Handles 200 Full Success	✅	3012ms
Partial Batch Handling.Handles 200 With All Ok	✅	4507ms
Partial Batch Handling.Does Not Retry Dropped Events	✅	4509ms
Partial Batch Handling.Does Not Retry Limited Events	✅	4508ms
Partial Batch Handling.Prunes Ok Events On Partial Retry	✅	7513ms
Partial Batch Handling.Prunes Dropped Events On Partial Retry	✅	7510ms
Partial Batch Handling.Retries Only Retry Events From Partial	✅	7513ms
Partial Batch Handling.Partial Retry Preserves Uuids	✅	7508ms
Partial Batch Handling.Partial Retry Attempt Header Increments	✅	7511ms
Partial Batch Handling.Partial Retry Request Id Preserved	✅	7515ms
Partial Batch Handling.Respects Retry After On Partial	✅	9512ms
Partial Batch Handling.Unknown Result Treated As Terminal	✅	4505ms
Partial Batch Handling.Mixed Ok Drop Limited No Retry	✅	4507ms
Compression.Sends Gzip Content Encoding	✅	1011ms
Compression.No Content Encoding When Disabled	✅	1009ms
Compression.Compressed Body Is Decompressible	✅	1009ms
Error Handling.Does Not Retry On Unknown 4Xx	✅	3509ms
Event Options.Cookieless Mode Override	✅	1008ms
Event Options.Disable Skew Correction Override	✅	1009ms
Event Options.Process Person Profile Override	✅	1009ms
Event Options.Product Tour Id Override	✅	1010ms
Event Options.Unset Options Omitted	✅	1009ms
Event Options.Options Override In Batch	✅	1013ms
Geoip And Historical Migration.Geoip Disable Injected Into Properties	✅	1008ms
Geoip And Historical Migration.Historical Migration Set In Body	✅	1010ms
Geoip And Historical Migration.Historical Migration Absent By Default	✅	1010ms

Feature_Flags Tests

✅ 17/17 tests passed

View Details

Test	Status	Duration
Request Payload.Request With Person Properties Device Id	✅	1007ms
Request Payload.Flags Request Uses V2 Query Param	✅	1007ms
Request Payload.Flags Request Hits Flags Path Not Decide	✅	1006ms
Request Payload.Flags Request Omits Authorization Header	✅	1007ms
Request Payload.Token In Flags Body Matches Init	✅	1006ms
Request Payload.Groups Round Trip	✅	1007ms
Request Payload.Groups Default To Empty Object	✅	1006ms
Request Payload.Disable Geoip False Propagates As Geoip Disable False	✅	1007ms
Request Payload.Disable Geoip Omitted Defaults To False	✅	1007ms
Request Payload.Flag Keys To Evaluate Contains Only Requested Key	✅	1006ms
Request Lifecycle.No Flags Request On Init Alone	✅	503ms
Request Lifecycle.No Flags Request On Normal Capture	✅	1507ms
Request Lifecycle.Two Flag Calls Produce Two Remote Requests	✅	1011ms
Request Lifecycle.Mock Response Value Is Returned To Caller	✅	1001ms
Retry Behavior.Retries Flags On 502	✅	1007ms
Retry Behavior.Retries Flags On 504	✅	1007ms
Side Effect Events.Get Feature Flag Captures Feature Flag Called Event	✅	1508ms

[cat-ph]

let's go! 🚀