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[bot] Bedrock ConverseStream drops tool use and non-text content blocks in streaming spans

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
64/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
aws, java

Research direction

Start with TeeingSubscriber.onNext, parseDeltaText, and buildConverseJson in braintrust-sdk/instrumentation/aws_bedrock_2_30_0/src/main/java/dev/braintrust/instrumentation/awsbedrock/v2_30_0/BraintrustBedrockInterceptor.java. Compare the streaming event handling with normalizeBedrockMessage() in braintrust-sdk/src/main/java/dev/braintrust/instrumentation/InstrumentationSemConv.java and review the existing Bedrock tests. Done means streaming tool-use content, identifiers, names, and input are represented in the span output, with coverage in BraintrustAWSBedrockTest.java.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

The Bedrock ConverseStream instrumentation in TeeingSubscriber only accumulates delta.text from contentBlockDelta events. When the model returns tool use content blocks during streaming (a documented and supported Bedrock feature), the tool call data is silently dropped from the span output.

Non-streaming Converse calls handle tool use correctly — normalizeBedrockMessage() in InstrumentationSemConv already recognizes toolUse, toolResult, and image content block types and adds appropriate type annotations. The gap is exclusively in the streaming path.

What is missing

1. TeeingSubscriber only parses text deltas (lines 273–289)
case "contentBlockDelta" -> {
    String t = parseDeltaText(payload);   // only looks for delta.text
    if (t != null) {
        text.append(t);
        // ...
    }
}

parseDeltaText() (lines 322–339) searches exclusively for delta.text. Bedrock ConverseStream sends delta.toolUse for tool use blocks (containing incremental input JSON), which is silently ignored.

2. contentBlockStart events are not handled

The TeeingSubscriber switch (lines 273–289) has no case for contentBlockStart. This event carries toolUse.toolUseId and toolUse.name — metadata needed to reconstruct the tool call. Without it, even if tool use deltas were captured, the tool name and ID would be lost.

3. buildConverseJson always produces a single text block (lines 385–410)
gen.writeArrayFieldStart("content");
gen.writeStartObject();
gen.writeStringField("text", text);   // always one text block
gen.writeEndObject();
gen.writeEndArray();

The synthetic response JSON always contains exactly one {"text": "..."} content block, regardless of what the model actually returned. When the model requests a tool call, the span output will show empty text instead of the tool invocation.

Impact

When a streaming Bedrock call triggers tool use (common in agentic workflows):

  • The span's output_json contains [{"role":"assistant","content":[{"text":"","type":"text"}]}] — as if the model returned nothing
  • The stopReason is captured as "tool_use", contradicting the empty output
  • Tool call names, IDs, and argument JSON are permanently lost from the trace
  • Non-streaming Converse calls with tool use are correctly captured

Braintrust docs status

Upstream sources

Local files inspected

  • braintrust-sdk/instrumentation/aws_bedrock_2_30_0/src/main/java/dev/braintrust/instrumentation/awsbedrock/v2_30_0/BraintrustBedrockInterceptor.java — lines 273–289 (TeeingSubscriber.onNext: only contentBlockDelta→text, messageStop, metadata handled; no contentBlockStart), lines 322–339 (parseDeltaText: only delta.text), lines 385–410 (buildConverseJson: hardcoded single text block)
  • braintrust-sdk/src/main/java/dev/braintrust/instrumentation/InstrumentationSemConv.java — lines 400–434 (normalizeBedrockMessage: non-streaming path correctly handles toolUse, toolResult, image content block types)
  • braintrust-sdk/instrumentation/aws_bedrock_2_30_0/src/test/java/dev/braintrust/instrumentation/awsbedrock/v2_30_0/BraintrustAWSBedrockTest.java — no streaming test exercises tool use responses
Dominant language
Java
Stars
21
Forks
5
Avg merge
2d 7h
Merged PRs (30d)
8

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