What stays on your machine

What stays on your machine

• Your code. The graft map is built on your machine with tree-sitter. No model, no network. The optional trail build --deep summaries go to the model provider you choose, under your own key.
• Personal learnings. Kept in ~/.trail. Never committed, never uploaded.
• Repo learnings. Files in your repo, shared through git like any other file.
• Your past sessions. trail init reads your own messages from Claude Code’s transcripts for the repo, on your machine. Your own Claude Code does the reading, with Claude Sonnet under your login, so your messages go only to Anthropic, and it counts toward your Claude usage. None of it goes to Trail.
• Your PR reviews. When gh is installed and signed in, trail init reads the review comments on the repo’s last 50 merged PRs with it, under your GitHub login. Anything that looks like a secret is taken out, and your own Claude Code reads them the same way. None of it goes to Trail.
• If you connect a Trail workspace. No learning goes to Trail until you do, and the sign-in link tells Trail only the repo it was offered in. Once connected, the learnings committed in the repos you added go to Trail, including those on teammates’ pushed branches. An edit you haven’t committed, or a file git doesn’t track, stays on your machine. Each search and check that used them sends which learnings were shown and whose they are, never what you typed or which files you were in. That is how the team page counts reuse.
• Anonymous usage stats. Buckets and fixed labels only, never the title, text or paths of a learning. Turn it off with trail telemetry disable or DO_NOT_TRACK=1.

What runs where

Where	What
On your machine, no key, no network	The structural code graph. trail build (wiring graph + per-file cards), trail build --check, trail ask, learnings and trail check are deterministic. They never call a model.
Through your provider key	The LLM-written parts. trail build --deep adds the concept nodes (file summaries + node synthesis) and the per-symbol summaries and cruxes. See Configure providers.
Through Trail, only if you connect a workspace	The learnings committed in the repos you added, and which of them each search and check showed.
Anonymous usage stats	A daily npm version check and one batched usage ping.

The usage ping carries buckets and fixed labels only: never your code, file paths, repo name, symbols, queries, learnings or error messages. TELEMETRY.md is the complete list and trail telemetry debug prints exactly what your machine would send. DO_NOT_TRACK=1 disables both network calls; trail telemetry disable or unchecking the box in trail init disables only the usage ping. The ping is off in CI and in any build from source.

See also

• Manage telemetry