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Telemetry: document local telemetry behavior and privacy guidance #987

@EhabY

Description

@EhabY

Follow-up from the local telemetry audit of #953 / #903.

Problem

Before we encourage users to export/share local telemetry, we should document what is collected, where it lives, and the basic privacy/cardinality rules future instrumentation should follow.

This issue is intentionally documentation/guidance only. Implementation work for export hardening and new instrumentation is tracked separately in #983, #984, #985, and #986.

Scope

User-facing documentation

Document:

  • what coder.telemetry.level = local means
  • where local telemetry files are stored
  • retention/rotation behavior
  • what kinds of data may appear in exports
  • how to disable local telemetry
  • how to export/review telemetry before sharing
  • how telemetry relates to support bundles once Support bundles should include recent local telemetry #952 lands

Lightweight contributor guidance

Add a short telemetry guidance section for future instrumentation:

  • use bounded event names and properties
  • avoid raw query strings, file paths, tokens, task prompts/messages, and arbitrary user-provided content
  • prefer enums/buckets over free-form error strings or high-cardinality dimensions
  • be deliberate about deployment URLs, workspace names, agent names, machine IDs, and session IDs
  • keep metrics low-cardinality

Out of scope

Acceptance criteria

  • Users can understand what local telemetry is, where it is stored, how long it is retained, how to disable it, and what exports may contain.
  • Contributors have concise privacy/cardinality guidance for adding telemetry events.
  • The docs link to the related implementation issues where appropriate.

Updated by Coder Agent from the telemetry audit of #953.

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