Context Propagation

Definitions

The carrying of request-scoped metadata such as trace IDs, auth claims, locale, or tenant information across function boundaries, asynchronous tasks, threads, or service calls. Context propagation is crucial for observability and correctness in distributed systems because work often continues far from where it started.
In plain English: Passing important request or execution context along as work moves through a system.
Example: "The tracing gap was caused by broken context propagation between the HTTP layer and the asynchronous job workers downstream."