Analytics

Bolt collects data about how you use it to help the Bolt team make decisions about how to improve it. You can opt out of providing this data. Analytics is disabled by default.

Opt out of data collection

You can opt out of data collection by setting an option in Bolt's configuration or by setting an environment variable.

Bolt configuration

To disable data collection, set analytics: false in your configuration file. This option is supported in the system-wide, user-level, and project configuration files. false is the default value.

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# bolt-defaults.yaml
analytics: false

Setting the analytics: false option in a configuration file disables data collection universally. You cannot override the option by setting it to true in another configuration file. For example, setting analytics: true in a project configuration file does not enable data collection if you've set analytics: false in the system-wide or user-level configuration file.

Environment variable

To disable data collection, set the BOLT_DISABLE_ANALYTICS environment variable to any value.

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export BOLT_DISABLE_ANALYTICS=true

Data collected

Each time you run Bolt, it collects the following information and associates it with a randomly generated, non-identifiable user UUID:

  • Bolt version
  • User locale
  • Operating system and version
  • The name of the executed command, such as command run or task show
  • The names of built-in functions called from a plan
  • Transports used and the number of targets using each transport
  • The number of targets and groups defined in the inventory
  • The number of targets targeted with a command
  • The output format selected, such as human or json
  • Whether the Bolt project directory was determined from the location of a bolt-project.yaml file or with the --project command-line option
  • The number of times built-in tasks and plans are run
  • The number of statements in a manifest block and how many resources that produces for each target
  • The number of steps in a YAML plan
  • The return type of a YAML plan, such as an expression or a value
  • Which built-in plugins Bolt is using
  • Topics viewed with bolt guide <TOPIC>
  • IDs of any deprecation warnings
  • Whether the source file for upload_file, run_script, or file::read plan functions uses an absolute path or a module path.
  • Whether a task is run in no-operation mode.
  • Whether future.script_interpreter is enabled.

Viewing collected data

To see the data Bolt collects, add the --log-level trace option to your Bolt command or use -LogLevel trace if you're using PowerShell.