Telemetry

walkerOS @walkeros/cli and @walkeros/mcp support anonymous usage telemetry to help us improve the tools. Telemetry is off by default and requires explicit opt-in. Nothing is sent from your machine until you run walkeros telemetry enable.

This page describes the data contract, how to enable or disable it, and the legal basis.

Status

In the current release, no ingest endpoint is shipped. Opting in records your consent locally; actual data collection begins in a future release and will continue to honor your stored choice.

Why opt-in

walkerOS is a privacy-aware data-collection product built in the EU. The ePrivacy Directive (Article 5(3)) requires prior consent for any storing of or access to information on a user's terminal equipment that is not strictly necessary for the service the user asked for. Installing a persistent installation UUID on your machine to help us improve the tools is not strictly necessary to run walkeros bundle, so we ask first and we default off. This is the same consent model we encourage on the web.

The three states

Your choice is stored in ~/.config/walkeros/config.json under telemetryEnabled:

State	Meaning
field absent	You have not made a choice yet. Default: nothing is collected, no installation UUID is written.
true	You opted in via walkeros telemetry enable. An installation UUID is generated at that moment and the emitter is active.
false	You opted out via walkeros telemetry disable. Nothing is collected.

Commands

# Opt in
walkeros telemetry enable

# Opt out
walkeros telemetry disable

# Show current state
walkeros telemetry status

What we would collect (after opt-in)

Every event is an entity action (the same event model the rest of walkerOS uses). The emitted events:

Event	When
mcp start	MCP server starts up and completes the initialize handshake
cmd invoke	A CLI command or MCP tool is invoked
error throw	An unhandled error is thrown during a command or tool call

For each event we attach:

• Installation UUID: generated at opt-in, stored in ~/.config/walkeros/config.json, not linked to any account or user.
• Environment: OS, OS version, Node.js version, language, timezone, whether the process is running in CI.
• Command or tool name: for example bundle, push, flow_validate.
• Outcome: success or error. Never the error message.
• Duration: how long the command or tool call took, in milliseconds.
• Client version: the installed @walkeros/cli or @walkeros/mcp version.

What we do NOT collect

• File paths, file names, or file contents
• Environment variable names or values
• Error messages, stack traces, or code snippets
• Project names, flow names, destination settings, or any flow config content
• Account identifiers, email addresses, or auth tokens
• IP addresses

Source of truth

The full contract, with JSON Schemas for every event and every property, lives in the CLI source tree:

packages/cli/src/telemetry/flow.json

If it is not declared there, we do not emit it.

Headless environments

MCP servers, CI jobs, piped invocations, and any other non-interactive process inherit the stored choice but cannot prompt. In practice:

• If you have opted in via walkeros telemetry enable on the same machine, MCP and CI invocations emit telemetry normally.
• If you have never opted in on the machine, those surfaces stay silent.

There is no environment variable to force-enable telemetry on a machine that has not opted in. That is intentional: consent must be an explicit act.

Env var overrides

Two legacy env vars force telemetry off regardless of your stored choice:

export DO_NOT_TRACK=1
export WALKEROS_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1

These are honored for backward compatibility and for users who want a belt-and-braces guarantee even after opting in. They are not a substitute for opt-in: telemetry is already off by default.

Debug mode

To inspect exactly what would be sent after opt-in, set:

export WALKEROS_TELEMETRY_DEBUG=1

In debug mode the CLI and MCP print each telemetry payload to stderr as JSON and do not send anything to the network.

Where it goes (future)

When an ingest endpoint ships, telemetry events will be sent to the walkerOS managed endpoint operated by elbwalker GmbH on EU infrastructure. We will not share the data with any third party and we will not use it for advertising. It exists to help us prioritize fixes and improvements to the open-source tools.

Until then, opting in records your consent locally and emits nothing.