Telemetry and Feedback

Anonymous usage data helps improve self-host: which Apps people install, which Setup steps are slow, and where commands fail. Release builds send it to EU PostHog through https://hog.ajnart.dev. Development builds and CI send nothing. There is no public dashboard yet; one may come later.

What it is for

The data is used only to see how self-host is used, such as which Apps people install and where Setup and Onboarding break, and to debug failures. Only the maintainers see it. It is never sold, rented or shared with third parties, and never used for advertising.

What is sent

Only these four things. A command that succeeds sends nothing.

• An onboarding summary, when you approve Onboarding’s plan: your Experience level (new or advanced), the glyph set (nerd-font or simple), whether you skipped the intro, whether the machine check warned (ok or warn), how long Onboarding took, and the Catalog App and Recipe IDs and Access choice (home or local) you picked. Nothing is sent if you quit before approving.
• Errors, when a command fails or ends incomplete: the command name, duration, Catalog App and Recipe IDs, step IDs, outcomes and durations, and a PostHog $exception with the error type, a fixed description, a stable fingerprint, and in-app function names, module-relative files and line numbers. Panics are unhandled exceptions, flushed before the original panic continues. Warning and error steps also send fixed-text OTLP log records with the step and command IDs. These are not App logs, raw error messages or distributed traces.
• Agent App requests. When an agent is asked for an App that is not in the Catalog, it runs self-host apps request "<name>", which sends the App’s name (lowercase, at most 64 characters) and the host of its homepage, never a path or query. A person asks for an App by opening a GitHub issue instead.
• Feedback, only after you see the text and agree (see below).

Each event also carries the self-host version, OS and architecture. Events are anonymous: PostHog keeps no person profile and no person properties. GeoIP is disabled; payloads contain no IP addresses or locations. Receiving network infrastructure still sees the source IP. Server-side “Discard client IP data” is a maintainer-controlled setting, not something the CLI verifies.

This website

self-host.fyi counts page views with Cloudflare Web Analytics: no cookies, no fingerprinting, no personal data, and nothing shared with the CLI telemetry above.

What is never sent automatically

Host names, absolute file paths, typed inputs, secrets, App data, raw error or panic text, IP addresses or locations. Stack files are relative to the Go module, never to the machine where the binary was built or installed.

There is no stored ID

Nothing identifies you or your machine, and nothing is saved. Each run uses a random value held in memory and thrown away when the command ends, so one run cannot be linked to another. Older versions that saved a telemetry-id file no longer read it; you can delete it.

Notice and controls

The first plain command or Onboarding announces Telemetry and links here, with no button or toggle. Automatic usage is not sent before the notice is shown; an initial --json command does not announce or send. Usage and logs wait at most 500 ms and are dropped silently if the network is slow, without retries.

To turn all Telemetry and Feedback off, set either environment variable:

export SELF_HOST_NO_TELEMETRY=1

or DO_NOT_TRACK=1. Sending is always off when CI is set or the binary is a development build. Tests use fake transports and never send real Telemetry.

Feedback is deliberate

When an agent cannot fix a problem, self-host feedback --message "…" can send a report after you see the exact text and agree. --yes is only for approval already given in chat. Feedback is the one event carrying approved free text; the agent must remove personal details and the CLI masks known secrets again. --app <id> adds a short Debug report summary, never App logs.

Messages from --message or stdin are limited to 4096 bytes. Approved Feedback uses the same endpoint, anonymity and off switches, but waits up to five seconds for delivery and reports failure. It does not require the usage notice because you explicitly approved it. With Telemetry off it sends nothing, exits 1, and points to GitHub Issues.

Technical sources

• PostHog Go exception fields.
• PostHog OTLP/HTTP logs endpoint and project-token authentication.
• PostHog reverse proxies.

Logs use the proxy’s documented /i/v1/logs path with a bearer project token. Fake-transport tests verify the requests, not live proxy ingestion or server-side IP discard. The key embedded in releases is a public write-only project token, not a personal API key.