Pipeline

How Ultra observes and audits every MCP request

The pipeline is the core mechanism that gives you visibility into every MCP request and response. Each request flows through Ultra’s observability layers — capturing traces, structured logs, audit events, and metrics — before reaching the upstream server.

What the Pipeline Captures

Layer	What it captures	Where to view
Trace	Distributed traces for each request and response	Traces
Logging	Structured request/response logs	Dashboard
Audit	Security-relevant events with severity, outcome, and principal	Audit Log
Metrics	Request counts, latencies, error rates	Dashboard

Request and Response Flow

Every request and response passes through the same set of observability layers, so nothing slips by unrecorded.

Audit Guarantees

The audit layer is designed to block a successful operation if it can’t be recorded. This is a deliberate security choice: every completed MCP call must have a corresponding audit record, so compliance teams can rely on completeness.

The other layers absorb errors silently — observability should never break your workflow.

Auth and Policy enforcement are planned but not yet implemented. See Roadmap: Policy Engine.