Telemetry

What the heartbeat sends

DorkOS sends one small message to dorkos.ai about once a day. This is how we can even roughly count how many people are actively running DorkOS. Here is the whole thing:

{
  "instanceId": "a1b2c3d4-e5f6-...",
  "dorkosVersion": "0.47.0",
  "os": "darwin-arm64",
  "runtimesConfigured": ["claude-code", "codex"],
  "tunnelEnabled": false,
  "cloudLinked": false,
  "counts": { "agents": 4, "tasks": 2, "relayAdapters": 1 }
}

Field by field:

• instanceId: a random id created on your machine. It marks one install so we do not double-count you. It is not your name, your account, or anything we can trace back to you.
• dorkosVersion: which version of DorkOS you are running.
• os: your platform and chip type, like darwin-arm64. Not your hostname.
• runtimesConfigured: which agent runtimes you have turned on, like Claude Code or Codex.
• tunnelEnabled: whether you use the tunnel to reach DorkOS from your phone. True or false only.
• cloudLinked: whether this install is linked to a DorkOS account. True or false only.
• counts: rough totals of your agents, tasks, and relay adapters. Just numbers, never their names or contents.

What it never sends

The list above is the complete payload. It is enforced in code and in tests, so nothing can sneak in. In particular it never includes your prompts, your code, file paths, your hostname or username, IP address, or anything from your sessions. This is what makes it anonymous rather than personal, and it is why we can turn it on by default. If we ever want to add a field, we change this page first.

We tell you before anything sends

The very first time DorkOS starts, it prints a plain notice in its log: what it shares, a link to this page, and how to turn it off. Nothing is sent on that first run. If you do nothing, the daily heartbeat and install counts begin on the next launch. If you turn them off first, they never start.

Marketplace installs

The install-count channel is on by default too, and it helps us rank packages and spot broken installs. It follows the same no-PII rule and is documented in detail on the marketplace privacy page.

Error reporting (a separate opt-in)

DorkOS can also send a crash report when something breaks, so we can fix it without asking you to dig through log files. Unlike the heartbeat, this one is off until you turn it on, and it is careful about what it sends:

• It goes to dorkos.ai, the same place as the heartbeat, and nowhere else. There is no third party and nothing for you to set up.
• We send the error type and a cleaned-up stack trace (which function, which file, which line), and nothing else. We do not send the error message text at all, because a message can contain whatever your code put in it. No prompts, no code, no file paths, no session data.

Before anything is sent, home directories and full file paths are stripped (so no username leaks), and anything that looks like a key, token, or password is redacted. To turn it on, set telemetry.errorReporting: true in your config. That is the only switch; leave it off (the default) and nothing is reported. You can preview a crash report first with DORKOS_TELEMETRY_DEBUG=1, which prints it to your terminal instead of sending it.

How to turn it off (or back on)

You have three easy ways to turn the anonymous channels off, and any one of them is enough:

• Run dorkos telemetry disable from your terminal.
• Set the environment variable DO_NOT_TRACK=1 (or DORKOS_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1). This beats your config, so it silences DorkOS everywhere at once.
• Open settings and use the Privacy and Data tab, which has a switch for each channel.

You can also edit your config file at ~/.dork/config.json:

{
  "telemetry": {
    "heartbeat": true,        // the daily ping (on by default)
    "install": true,          // marketplace install counts (on by default)
    "errorReporting": false,  // scrubbed crash reports to dorkos.ai (off by default)
    "userHasDecided": true
  }
}

Set a value to false to turn a channel off, or true to turn it on. The two anonymous channels default to true; error reporting defaults to false.

Preview the exact payload

Set DORKOS_TELEMETRY_DEBUG=1 and DorkOS prints the exact JSON it would send to your terminal instead of sending it. Nothing goes over the network in that mode, so you can read, word for word, what would leave your machine.

Why anonymous by default

An anonymous count that cannot be traced to you is the norm for developer tools, from Next.js to VS Code to Homebrew, and it is the only way a small team can tell whether people are actually using what it builds. We keep it genuinely anonymous, we show you the whole payload, and we make turning it off a one-liner. Your code and your chats with the AI never leave your machine, default or not.

When this changes

DorkOS moves fast. If what the heartbeat sends ever changes, we update this page and the date at the top before the change ships. No quiet edits.