---
title: Telemetry
description: A description of the opt-out telemetry implementation in Axolotl.
---

# Telemetry in Axolotl

Axolotl implements anonymous telemetry to help maintainers understand how the library
is used and where users encounter issues. This data helps prioritize features, optimize
performance, and fix bugs.

## Data Collection

We collect:

- **System info**: OS, Python version, PyTorch version, Transformers version, Axolotl version
- **Hardware info**: CPU count, memory, GPU count and models
- **Usage patterns**: Models (from a whitelist) and configurations used
- **Error tracking**: Stack traces and error messages (sanitized to remove personal information)

No personally identifiable information (PII) is collected.

## Implementation

Telemetry is implemented using PostHog and consists of:

1. `axolotl.telemetry.TelemetryManager`: A singleton class that initializes the telemetry system and provides methods for tracking events.
2. `axolotl.telemetry.errors.track_errors`: A decorator that captures exceptions and sends sanitized stack traces.

## Opt-Out Mechanism

Telemetry is **enabled by default** on an opt-out basis. To disable it, set either:

- `AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK=1` (Axolotl-specific)
- `DO_NOT_TRACK=1` (Global standard)

To acknowledge and explicitly enable telemetry (and remove the warning message), set:
`AXOLOTL_DO_NOT_TRACK=0`

## Privacy

- Stack traces are sanitized to remove personal file paths, keeping only the Axolotl code paths
- Each run generates a unique anonymous ID
- Only whitelisted organization information is tracked
    - See `axolotl/telemetry/whitelist.yaml` for the set of whitelisted organizations
- Telemetry is only sent from the main process to avoid duplicate events