microsoft / microsoft/Agent365-python

Bug: NonRecordingSpan crashes with 'NonRecordingSpan object has no attribute context' when observability exporter is enabled

Open
#257 2 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee View on GitHub

@nikhilNava is already working on this.

Since May 27, 2026.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
41
Forks
23
Avg merge
7h 43m
Merged PRs (30d)
3

Description

Description

When ENABLE_A365_OBSERVABILITY_EXPORTER=true is set and the token resolver returns None for the first turn (e.g., agentic auth not yet established), the OpenTelemetry TracerProvider returns a NonRecordingSpan instead of a real Span. Multiple locations in the A365 observability code access .context directly on the span object, which does not exist on NonRecordingSpan — only get_span_context() is available.

This causes the agent to crash on the very first scope creation with:

Exception caught : 'NonRecordingSpan' object has no attribute 'context'

Reproduction

  1. Deploy a Python agent with ENABLE_A365_OBSERVABILITY_EXPORTER=true
  2. Ensure the token resolver returns None on the first turn (e.g., agentic auth token not yet cached)
  3. Send the first message via Teams @mention
  4. The agent crashes with the above error

Verified against opentelemetry-api==1.33.1:

from opentelemetry.trace import NonRecordingSpan, SpanContext

s = NonRecordingSpan(SpanContext(0, 0, False))
print(hasattr(s, 'context'))          # False
print(hasattr(s, 'get_span_context')) # True
s.context                              # AttributeError
s.get_span_context()                   # Works correctly

Affected Files

File Lines Pattern
libraries/microsoft-agents-a365-observability-core/.../opentelemetry_scope.py 161, 270 self._span.context.span_id
libraries/microsoft-agents-a365-observability-core/.../exporters/enriched_span.py 57 return self._span.context
libraries/microsoft-agents-a365-observability-core/.../exporters/agent365_exporter.py 333 ctx = sp.context

Root Cause

The Span interface in opentelemetry-api defines get_span_context() as the public method. The .context attribute is only available on the concrete ReadableSpan / recording span implementations but not on NonRecordingSpan. The A365 code uses .context (the attribute) instead of get_span_context() (the interface method), which works for recording spans but fails for non-recording spans.

Suggested Fix

Replace all span.context attribute accesses with span.get_span_context():

# Before (broken with NonRecordingSpan):
span_id = f"{self._span.context.span_id:016x}" if self._span.context else "unknown"

# After (safe for all span types):
sc = self._span.get_span_context()
span_id = f"{sc.span_id:016x}" if sc else "unknown"

Apply the same pattern to enriched_span.py and agent365_exporter.py.

Workaround

Set ENABLE_A365_OBSERVABILITY_EXPORTER=false and redeploy.

Environment

  • opentelemetry-api version: 1.33.1
  • Python 3.11+
  • Agent deployed to Azure App Service with Teams channel

Related

The same bug exists in microsoft/opentelemetry-distro-python (the upstream distro repo). Tracked there as https://github.com/microsoft/opentelemetry-distro-python/issues/166.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Assessment

This issue has not been assessed yet.

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.