fix: skip cold start spans for provisioned concurrency

With provisioned concurrency, containers are pre-warmed before
invocations, causing module load timestamps to be captured minutes
(or hours) before the first invocation. This inflates aws.lambda.load
span durations to the full pre-warm gap rather than the actual load time.

Skip cold start span creation for provisioned-concurrency, consistent
with the existing fix for lambda-managed-instances (PR #717).
Fixes #723.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>

Author: litianningdatadog

src/trace/listener.ts

@@ -5,7 +5,7 @@ import { patchHttp, unpatchHttp } from "./patch-http";
 import { extractTriggerTags, extractHTTPStatusCodeTag, parseEventSource } from "./trigger";
 import { ColdStartTracerConfig, ColdStartTracer } from "./cold-start-tracer";
 import { logDebug, tagObject } from "../utils";
-import { didFunctionColdStart, isProactiveInitialization, isManagedInstancesMode } from "../utils/cold-start";
+import { didFunctionColdStart, isProactiveInitialization, isManagedInstancesMode, isProvisionedConcurrency } from "../utils/cold-start";
 import { datadogLambdaVersion } from "../constants";
 import { ddtraceVersion, parentSpanFinishTimeHeader, DD_SERVICE_ENV_VAR } from "./constants";
 import { patchConsole } from "./patch-console";
@@ -182,11 +182,10 @@ export class TraceListener {
     }
     const coldStartNodes = getTraceTree();
     if (coldStartNodes.length > 0) {
-      // Skip creating cold start spans in managed instances mode
-      // since the gap between the sandbox init and the function
-      // invocation might be too large to provide a useful trace and
-      // experience
-      if (!isManagedInstancesMode()) {
+      // Skip creating cold start spans in managed instances mode or provisioned concurrency
+      // since the gap between the sandbox init and the function invocation might be very
+      // large (minutes or hours), making the spans misleading and not useful
+      if (!isManagedInstancesMode() && !isProvisionedConcurrency()) {
         const coldStartConfig: ColdStartTracerConfig = {
           tracerWrapper: this.tracerWrapper,
           parentSpan:

src/utils/cold-start.spec.ts

@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ import {
   setSandboxInit,
   isProactiveInitialization,
   isManagedInstancesMode,
+  isProvisionedConcurrency,
 } from "./cold-start";
 
 beforeEach(_resetColdStart);
@@ -78,4 +79,31 @@ describe("cold-start", () => {
 
     process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE = originalValue;
   });
+
+  it("identifies provisioned concurrency when AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE is set", () => {
+    const originalValue = process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE;
+
+    process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE = "provisioned-concurrency";
+    expect(isProvisionedConcurrency()).toEqual(true);
+
+    process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE = originalValue;
+  });
+
+  it("identifies non-provisioned concurrency when AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE is not set", () => {
+    const originalValue = process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE;
+
+    delete process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE;
+    expect(isProvisionedConcurrency()).toEqual(false);
+
+    process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE = originalValue;
+  });
+
+  it("identifies non-provisioned concurrency when AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE has different value", () => {
+    const originalValue = process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE;
+
+    process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE = "on-demand";
+    expect(isProvisionedConcurrency()).toEqual(false);
+
+    process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE = originalValue;
+  });
 });

src/utils/cold-start.ts

@@ -47,6 +47,18 @@ export function isManagedInstancesMode(): boolean {
   return process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE === "lambda-managed-instances";
 }
 
+/**
+ * Checks if the Lambda function is running with provisioned concurrency.
+ * With provisioned concurrency, containers are pre-warmed before invocations,
+ * so the gap between initialization and invocation can be very large (minutes or hours).
+ * Cold start spans created from pre-warm module load times would have inflated durations
+ * and are not useful in the context of the actual invocation.
+ * @returns true if running with provisioned concurrency, false otherwise
+ */
+export function isProvisionedConcurrency(): boolean {
+  return process.env.AWS_LAMBDA_INITIALIZATION_TYPE === "provisioned-concurrency";
+}
+
 // For testing, reset the globals to their original values
 export function _resetColdStart() {
   functionDidColdStart = true;

src/utils/index.ts

@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ export {
   setSandboxInit,
   isProactiveInitialization,
   isManagedInstancesMode,
+  isProvisionedConcurrency,
 } from "./cold-start";
 export { promisifiedHandler } from "./handler";
 export { Timer } from "./timer";