Telemetry

The CLI sends anonymous usage counts. It is on by default, it is disclosed on the first run that would send anything, and there are three separate ways to turn it off.

This page lists the exact contents. Nothing here is a summary of a longer policy: this is the payload.

What is sent#

Two kinds of event, both counts.

Command events. One per command you run.

Event name

Which of the known command names ran.

CLI version

The version of @caveman-ai/cli.

Platform

Operating system, architecture, and Node major version.

Duration

How long the command took.

Exit class

Whether it succeeded, and if not, which class of failure.

Engine session events. One aggregate after a local wrapped session that was eligible for compression.

Counts

Request count and token counts.

Eligibility

How much of the session was eligible for compression.

Before and after

Measured totals and the amount cut.

Cache counters

Hit and miss counts.

Coverage flags

Which parts of the session could be measured at all.

Mode

observe or compress.

There is also a one-time first_run event carrying scan aggregates.

What is never sent#

This list is enforced server side by an allowlist, not by convention on the client.

• Prompts, completions, or any model output
• Your code, file paths, or URLs
• Command arguments
• Provider or model names
• Request, session or account identifiers
• Payload hashes
• Any dollar figure

The token figures in a session event are local inferred measurements. They cannot become a verified saving, because there is no account attached to them and no bill to compare against.

The anonymous id#

The first interactive run of a real command writes a stable anonymous id to your config, so a returning user is not counted as a new one. It is not linked to an account, and there is nothing on our side that can turn it back into a person.

Automation never mints one. CI and non-interactive runs default to off and do not persist a decision, because generating an anonymous identity for a build machine would corrupt the counts it is meant to inform.

Turning it off#

Any one of these is enough.

caveman telemetry off

export CAVEMAN_TELEMETRY=0

export DO_NOT_TRACK=1

DO_NOT_TRACK is the cross-tool convention and it is honoured here without needing to know that Caveman exists. Setting CAVEMAN_TELEMETRY=1 turns it on for a single automated run without persisting a decision.

If you already answered the old prompt#

Earlier versions asked a yes or no question on first run. Whichever way you answered, that answer is kept and is never rewritten by the current default. Opting out once means opting out permanently.

The disclosure line#

On the first interactive run that would send anything, the CLI prints this and does not hide it behind a flag:

anonymous usage stats on — command + aggregate engine counts only,
never prompts, code, or file paths · caveman telemetry off

What is deliberately outside this#

Agent SDK economic receipts contain a per-call spend tree. They are never sent to this endpoint. Moving them anywhere would need an authenticated, account-scoped transport with explicit consent, and that is a different decision from this one.

Download counts come from the npm registry. They are not collected by the client.