Telemetry

This page is about the tapes CLI. The client, tapesctl, has no telemetry: no usage events, no PostHog client, and no environment variable to disable, because there is nothing to disable.

The server CLI

Release builds can send CLI usage events to PostHog when built with a PostHog project key. A source build without that injected key creates no PostHog client.

The implementation uses a random persistent UUID as the PostHog distinct ID. It stores that UUID and a first-run timestamp in telemetry.json under the resolved .tapes/ directory. Common event properties include CLI version, operating system, architecture, and $lib = tapes-cli.

Event-specific properties in the current client include command name, init preset, provider for session creation, search result count, server mode, MCP tool name, and error command/type. The code also defines install and sync events without additional properties.

These are implementation-level event fields, not a claim that the surrounding network or PostHog service cannot observe other transport metadata. Review the code and your PostHog deployment requirements before relying on telemetry privacy properties.

Disable telemetry

Use any one of:

tapes --disable-telemetry status

export TAPES_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=true

[telemetry]
disabled = true

The CLI also disables telemetry when it detects common CI environment variables, including CI, GITHUB_ACTIONS, GITLAB_CI, CIRCLECI, TRAVIS, JENKINS_URL, BUILDKITE, and CODEBUILD_BUILD_ID.

The global flag must precede the subcommand, as in tapes --disable-telemetry serve.