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Telemetry & privacy

Telemetry is off until you choose to turn it on. Skein asks once on first launch; you can change your choice any time in Settings → Privacy.

Two choices

Crash & error reports

Errors, crashes (including native crash dumps), warning-level logs, a 10%-sampled slice of performance traces, and session-start/end health events. A native crash dump captures the crashed process's stack, so it can contain fragments of whatever was in memory at that moment — only a stack summary is sent; the dump itself is processed on your machine.

An optional sub-toggle adds session replay: while it's on, the window's layout and clicks are recorded for the whole session, not just around an error. All text and inputs are masked, media (images, video, audio, canvas, SVGs) is blocked, and the terminal, editor, file, diff, and chat panes are excluded entirely — never recorded, not even masked. Console logs and network payloads are never captured.

Usage analytics

Which features are used — for example, that a terminal pane was opened, or that a script ran — as counts and fixed categories only. Never what was in a pane, what a script did, or any other free-form content.

Feedback you send

Help → Report a problem is the one exception to "no free-form content": with usage analytics on, it sends the message you write, an email address if you add one, and — if you leave it checked — the last 200 lines of the app log. The message and log lines go through the same path, URL, and branch stripping as everything else, and the form shows you the exact log text before you send it. Nothing is sent until you press Send.

Never sent
  • File contents
  • Commands you run
  • Prompts and terminal output
  • Your email address — unless you type it into Help → Report a problem so we can reply
Stripped before sending
  • File paths — we strip them from error messages and logs, shortening each to a form like <path:.ext>
  • URL paths — a URL in an error message or log keeps only its host (https://github.com/<path>)
  • Repo and branch names — dropped wherever they're a named field; in free text they're removed along with the paths and URLs that carry them

This stripping is best-effort pattern matching, not a guarantee: an unusual format could slip through.

Processor

Reports are processed by PostHog on their US cloud. IP addresses are discarded and GeoIP lookup is disabled, so no location is derived from your connection.

A crash dump that's captured before you've enabled crash reports is deleted, never sent. Dumps waiting to be sent (e.g. because you were offline) are kept for at most 7 days or 5 files, whichever comes first, then deleted.

Feature flags and beta features

If either choice is on, Skein asks PostHog which features are switched on for it. That request carries only an ID, your app version, OS, and CPU architecture. With usage analytics off, the ID is derived from your install ID so it can't be linked to it; with usage analytics on, it's your install ID. With both choices off, Skein never asks and uses its built-in defaults.

Joining or leaving a beta in Settings → Beta features is recorded against your install ID, so it needs usage analytics on.

Your controls
  • Settings → Privacy has a toggle for each consent; changes apply immediately, no restart needed
  • Reset ID replaces your install ID, so future data can no longer be linked to past data
  • The phone (web harness) has no separate consent UI — it follows the desktop app's choices and sends everything through it
This website

skein.buildqube.com collects cookieless page-view, download-click, and GitHub-click analytics, plus how many docs searches return results — never the search text itself. It honors your browser's Do Not Track setting and sets no cookies.