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Telemetry

n8n-as-code collects anonymous, privacy-first product telemetry to understand active usage across the CLI, VS Code/Cursor extension, MCP server, skills commands, and OpenClaw plugin.

Telemetry is used to answer product-level questions such as:

  • How many active users use n8n-as-code?
  • Which facades are used most: CLI, VS Code, MCP, skills, or plugins?
  • Where does setup fail?
  • Which workflows are common: sync, validation, conversion, credentials, or execution inspection?

Disable Telemetry​

Use the CLI:

n8nac telemetry disable

Check status:

n8nac telemetry status

Enable again:

n8nac telemetry enable

Telemetry is also disabled when any of these environment variables are set:

N8NAC_TELEMETRY=0
N8NAC_TELEMETRY=false
N8NAC_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1
DO_NOT_TRACK=1
CI=true

The VS Code extension also respects VS Code's telemetry setting.

On the documentation site, use the telemetry control in the bottom-right corner to disable or re-enable anonymous docs telemetry in your browser.

Connect PostHog Cloud​

n8n-as-code sends telemetry to a PostHog project using the PostHog Project token. The PostHog Project ID is for the PostHog API and is not used for event ingestion.

For a US Cloud PostHog project:

export N8NAC_POSTHOG_KEY="phc_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
export N8NAC_POSTHOG_HOST="https://us.i.posthog.com"
export N8NAC_TELEMETRY_ENV="dev"

For an EU Cloud PostHog project:

export N8NAC_POSTHOG_KEY="phc_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx"
export N8NAC_POSTHOG_HOST="https://eu.i.posthog.com"
export N8NAC_TELEMETRY_ENV="dev"

Every event includes a telemetry_environment property so one PostHog project can safely separate local development, tests, prereleases, and production. Use N8NAC_TELEMETRY_ENV=dev in ./.env, N8NAC_TELEMETRY_ENV=test in ./.env.test, N8NAC_TELEMETRY_ENV=next for prerelease builds, and N8NAC_TELEMETRY_ENV=prod for stable production builds.

During release builds, @n8n-as-code/telemetry embeds the PostHog project token, host, and telemetry environment from the build environment into the published package. Runtime environment variables still take precedence, so local development and tests can override the release defaults without changing the published artifacts.

Check the local telemetry status:

n8nac telemetry status

To inspect events locally while testing:

N8NAC_TELEMETRY_DEBUG=1 n8nac workspace status

In PostHog, open the target project and use the Events or Activity view to verify events such as first_seen, product_active, cli_command_completed, or vscode_extension_activated. Dashboards are built from PostHog insights over those events; the product code only needs the project token and region host.

What Is Collected​

Telemetry events contain only coarse product usage metadata:

  • anonymous installation ID
  • telemetry environment, such as dev, test, next, or prod
  • facade, such as cli, vscode, mcp, skills, or openclaw
  • package or extension version
  • command or tool name from a controlled list
  • success or failure outcome
  • coarse error category
  • operation duration
  • operating system family
  • Node.js major version
  • counts, such as result count, warning count, or conflict count
  • booleans, such as whether a workspace is configured

What Is Never Collected​

n8n-as-code telemetry must not collect:

  • API keys
  • credential values or credential names
  • cookies
  • clipboard contents
  • workflow JSON or TypeScript source
  • node parameters or expressions
  • pinned or static workflow data
  • webhook paths
  • execution payloads or execution data
  • raw n8n host URLs
  • local file paths
  • project names
  • workflow names
  • user emails or names
  • git remotes
  • raw search queries

Identity​

The telemetry identity is a random anonymous UUID stored locally. It is not derived from your username, machine name, workspace path, n8n host, API key, or project.

The local telemetry config is stored at:

~/.config/n8n-as-code/telemetry.json

Backend​

Events are sent through the shared n8n-as-code telemetry layer. The initial backend is PostHog, but product code calls only the internal telemetry API so the backend can be moved to self-hosted PostHog or replaced later.