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Telemetry is the core of what makes CliDeck useful. It’s also the thing people are most likely to have questions about. Here’s the full picture.

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What Telemetry Means in CliDeck

When we say “telemetry,” we mean the signals that CLI agents emit about their own activity. These are OpenTelemetry (OTLP) log messages that agents like Claude Code, Codex, and Gemini CLI already support. CliDeck runs a local OTLP receiver on port 4000 and configures the agents to send their logs there.

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Where Does the Data Go?

Nowhere. It stays on your machine. The telemetry flow is: 
CLI Agent → localhost:4000 → CliDeck → your browser
There is no cloud component. CliDeck doesn’t have a backend service, doesn’t phone home, and doesn’t collect analytics. Everything runs locally.

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What Data Does CliDeck Receive?

From OTLP logs, CliDeck extracts:
DataUsed For
Session IDEnabling session resume
Timing of log eventsConfirming the agent is connected
CliDeck does not read:
  • Your prompts or what you type to the agent
  • The agent’s full responses or generated code
  • File contents or repository data
  • API keys or credentials

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What About Working/Idle Detection?

Working/idle status is not determined from telemetry content. CliDeck uses I/O heuristics:
  • How many bytes per second the terminal is outputting
  • How long the current burst of output has been going
  • Whether there’s been silence for more than 2 seconds
This is purely based on byte rates — CliDeck doesn’t need to know what the agent is saying, just that it’s saying something.

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What About the Message Preview?

The sidebar preview (last message from the agent) comes from reading the terminal’s output buffer — the same text you see in the terminal. This is local to your browser and is not sent anywhere.

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Can I Disable Telemetry?

Yes. Per agent:
  1. Open Settings > CLI Agents
  2. Select the agent
  3. Toggle off CliDeck integration
Without telemetry, CliDeck still works as a terminal multiplexer. You lose:
  • Session resume (no session ID capture)
  • Telemetry setup detection
  • Slightly less accurate status detection for some agents
The I/O heuristics still provide working/idle detection even without telemetry.

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Auto-Setup: What Changes on My System?

When you click “Configure automatically” for an agent, CliDeck writes to the agent’s config file:
AgentFile ModifiedWhat’s Added
Codex~/.codex/config.toml[otel] section with OTLP endpoint
Gemini CLI~/.gemini/settings.jsontelemetry object with local endpoint
Claude CodeNothingUses environment variables (no file changes)
OpenCode~/.config/opencode/plugins/Bridge plugin auto-installed (one-click)
Disabling the integration in CliDeck settings removes these additions. CliDeck also detects existing configurations on startup — if you’ve already configured an agent, the integration is enabled automatically without repeating setup.