Telemetry and Error Reporting

KiCad Studio Kit supports opt-in telemetry for the VS Code extension and kicad-mcp-pro. It is off by default. No third-party telemetry endpoint is enabled by default, and no project files, schematics, PCB content, netlists, BOMs, hostnames, API keys, or user home paths are allowed in telemetry payloads.

VS Code Extension

The extension uses one explicit opt-in setting:

{
  "kicadstudio.telemetry.enabled": false,
  "kicadstudio.telemetry.endpoint": "",
  "kicadstudio.telemetry.bufferLimit": 100
}

kicadstudio.telemetry.enabled must be set to true before the extension records usage or error events. kicadstudio.telemetry.endpoint must also be configured before network export is attempted. Leave the endpoint empty to keep telemetry local-only.

The extension also honors VS Code's telemetry.telemetryLevel setting as an upper bound:

VS Code level	KiCad Studio behavior
off	No usage or error telemetry
crash	No KiCad Studio usage or error telemetry
error	Redacted error telemetry only
all	Redacted usage counters and error telemetry

Usage events are anonymous counters such as activation, command timing, and UI surface usage. Error events include the error type, message, and a short stack trace after redaction. The offline retry buffer is bounded by kicadstudio.telemetry.bufferLimit; the newest events are retained when the buffer is full.

MCP Server

kicad-mcp-pro uses OpenTelemetry for opt-in server telemetry. It is disabled unless either KICAD_MCP_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=true, --telemetry, or an OTLP endpoint is configured.

KICAD_MCP_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=true \
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://127.0.0.1:4318 \
kicad-mcp-pro --telemetry

If telemetry is enabled without an endpoint, the server uses a local collector default:

Protocol	Default endpoint
http/protobuf	http://127.0.0.1:4318
grpc	http://127.0.0.1:4317

Set KICAD_MCP_TELEMETRY_BUFFER_MAX_EVENTS to control the bounded redacted event buffer. The default is 100, with 0 disabling the buffer.

Collected Data

Allowed data classes:

• Anonymous activation and feature usage counters.
• Redacted error type, message, and stack traces.
• MCP protocol version and an anonymous hash of the advertised tool catalog.
• KiCad CLI major.minor version, such as 10.0.

Forbidden data classes:

• Schematic, PCB, netlist, BOM, or other project content.
• User home paths, workspace paths, project names, file names, or hostnames.
• API keys, bearer tokens, OAuth secrets, passwords, and authorization headers.
• IP addresses or endpoint hostnames in event payloads.

Verification

The regression tests cover both sides:

corepack pnpm --filter kicadstudiokit exec jest test/unit/telemetry.test.ts --runInBand --coverage=false
uv run --project packages/mcp-server --all-extras pytest packages/mcp-server/tests/unit/test_telemetry.py -q

These tests prove telemetry disabled means no outbound extension send and no MCP buffered event. They also validate that enabled telemetry emits only redacted payloads and keeps bounded offline buffers.