warden

Anonymous Installation Telemetry

Anonymous Installation Telemetry

Every npm install of warden-sandbox-cli sends one minimal ping so maintainers can estimate real installation activity beyond the npm download count. That's the whole reason it exists — no dashboards, no accounts, no fingerprinting.

What happens

npm install → postinstall → telemetry.js → POST /install → one JSONL line appended to a server-local file (data/installs.jsonl on the landing host, gitignored, never served over HTTP). A database/dashboard can replace the file later — the stored record already has the final field shape (timestamp, package, version, platform, architecture, node_version).

Example payload (the entire request body — nothing else is sent):

{
  "package": "warden-sandbox-cli",
  "version": "0.1.12",
  "platform": "linux",
  "arch": "x64",
  "node": "v20.11.0"
}

Collected

  • Warden package version
  • OS/platform
  • CPU architecture
  • Node.js version
  • Timestamp (added server-side)

Not collected

  • Source code, files, or MCP contents
  • Environment variables or secrets
  • Project paths
  • Usernames or hostnames
  • Raw IP addresses — the API never reads x-forwarded-for, headers, or the socket address, and persists only the five validated body fields plus the timestamp

Reliability: it can never break your install

  • 3-second hard timeout (AbortController); worst case an install waits 3s
  • Every network/API/parse error is swallowed silently — no output, exit 0
  • Server down, DNS failure, HTTP 500, hanging socket: install continues
  • Telemetry is never a dependency of installing or running Warden

Opting out

Any one of these disables the ping entirely:

npm install --ignore-scripts   # skips all npm lifecycle scripts
WARDEN_NO_TELEMETRY=1 npm install -g warden-sandbox-cli
DO_NOT_TRACK=1 npm install -g warden-sandbox-cli
WARDEN_TELEMETRY=0 npm install -g warden-sandbox-cli

Because lifecycle scripts can be skipped, telemetry is explicitly not a complete census — it's an approximate signal.

Configuration

One constant, one override, no setup required:

  • Code: TELEMETRY_URL in build/npm-wrapper/telemetry.js
  • Override: WARDEN_TELEMETRY_URL environment variable
  • Default: https://warden-six-rouge.vercel.app/api/install

API contract

POST /install accepts exactly the five fields above (package pinned to warden-sandbox-cli, platform/arch from fixed allowlists, Node version matching vMAJOR.MINOR.PATCH…), with a 4 KiB body cap and no extra keys. Responses:

  • 200 {"ok": true} — stored
  • 400 {"ok": false, "error": "malformed payload" | "invalid JSON"} — rejected
  • 413 — body too large
  • 500 {"ok": false} — storage failure, deliberately generic (no internals)

Request bodies are never logged. HTTPS in production (Vercel default).

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