Payload Sampling
Control what percentage of prompt and response payloads are stored. Available on Growth and Compliance.
Guardrails run on every event whatever the sampling rate, for
ai.request,
ai.response and
agent.tool_call alike. Only payload storage is
affected: a blocked request is still blocked, and the violation is still recorded, even when the
payload itself is not stored. A violation recorded for a sampled-out event says which rule matched,
not where in the payload.
What sampling affects
| Always stored | Affected by sampling |
|---|---|
| Event type, timestamp, environment | Encrypted prompt text |
| Model, provider, request ID | Encrypted response text |
| Token usage and cost | Raw message payload |
| Decision (allow / warn / block / redact / unchecked) | Tool call input and output |
| Policy violations |
How it works
The sampling rate is a percentage (1–100). A value of 100 stores every payload (default).
A value of 10 stores roughly 1 in 10 request/response pairs.
The sampling decision is made once per ai.request event.
If a request is sampled out, its corresponding ai.response is also sampled out —
the pair is always consistent.
Sampled-out events appear in the event list and analytics normally but show no payload in the detail view.
Configuration
Go to App Settings → General → Request sampling and enter a value between 1 and 100. Changes take effect immediately for new requests.
When to use sampling
Two cases justify it: prompt volume where storing every payload costs more than it is worth, and
deployments that would rather not persist prompt text at all — a rate of
1 keeps decisions, tokens and cost while storing almost none of it.
It is a storage trade-off only: every event is still evaluated.
Caveats
- Sampled-out payloads cannot be recovered retroactively.
- Cost and token analytics are unaffected — usage data is always stored.
- Sampling is part of Growth and Compliance. On trial and Starter the setting is not offered and every payload is stored.
- A rate applies only while the organization is on a plan that includes sampling. If it moves to a plan without it, every payload is stored from then on; the saved rate is kept and applies again when the organization returns to Growth or Compliance.