feat: add flag to disable template insights #20940

code-asher · 2025-11-26T03:55:54Z

Closes #20399

I think half of the added lines are just moving the big mock template insights object in the related story.

To summarize the commit messages:

Do not log stats to the database.
Return errors on the insight endpoints.
Update the frontend to show those errors.
Also fixes an issue with getting the user status count via codersdk, since I added a test to ensure it was not disabled by this flag and it was sending the wrong payload.

github-actions · 2025-12-04T20:56:48Z

Task created: https://dev.coder.com/tasks/bpmct/2f0e9c27-6ee1-4d24-92bb-791ad39c64b7

bpmct · 2025-12-04T20:59:31Z

📚 Documentation Check

✅ Updates Needed

None - API documentation already updated in this PR

📝 New Docs Needed

docs/admin/monitoring/insights.md - Create a new guide explaining template insights feature, what data is collected, how to view insights in the UI, and how to disable it using --disable-template-insights flag. This would help administrators understand the feature and its privacy/performance implications.

📋 Already Documented

The PR appropriately updated:

docs/reference/cli/server.md - Added --disable-template-insights CLI flag documentation
docs/reference/api/general.md - Added disable_template_insights field to deployment config
docs/reference/api/schemas.md - Updated API schemas with the new config field

📖 Recommendation

While the reference documentation is complete, consider adding a user-facing guide that explains:

What template insights are and what they show
What data is collected and stored
Performance/storage impact of insights
When and why administrators might want to disable them
How disabling affects the UI (what happens to the insights pages)

This would fit well in the docs/admin/monitoring/ section alongside other observability features.

This comment was generated by an AI Agent through Coder Tasks

bpmct · 2025-12-04T21:00:59Z

Ha - that's a lot. Feel free to disregard

Proactively documents the --disable-template-insights flag from PR #20940 before it merges, ensuring documentation is ready when the feature lands.

This effectively disables template insights, as there will be no data. Prometheus remains unaffected; this only prevents our own storage of the stats.

It takes a timezone offset, not a date.

Now errors show up in the middle of the panel. This will include if the insights are disabled.

mafredri

All-in-all looks good, but I have one concern regarding agent stats (see comments). The rest are smaller suggestions/nits.

Whilst I think the FE changes look good, I'll defer approval to someone from the FE team as I believe they may want emotion to be converted to tailwind whilst you're in here.

cli/testdata/server-config.yaml.golden

coderd/workspacestats/reporter.go

coderd/coderd.go

mafredri · 2025-12-10T12:16:20Z

coderd/insights_test.go

+							SessionCountSsh:             stat.sessionCountSSH,
+						}, false)
+						createdAt = createdAt.Add(30 * time.Second)
+					}


Consider if this needs a rethink in context of the previous comment about disabling agent stats batching.

I might not quite be following, normally the reporter skips adding stats to the batcher but in the test here we are manually adding batches instead of delegating to the reporter, so I had to skip those separately here when we test disabled stats (otherwise we would have stats even though they are disabled).

Yeah, this change makes sense. My "consider" was tied to the other concern about not storing agent stats, and depending on the direction taken there (two options, 1, restore agent stats are always stored, or 2, keep but document the behavior).

This callout was for option 1.

site/src/pages/TemplatePage/TemplateInsightsPage/TemplateInsightsPage.stories.tsx

code-asher · 2025-12-11T03:45:28Z

codersdk/deployment.go

-			Group:       &deploymentGroupIntrospection,
-			YAML:        "disableTemplateInsights",
+			Name:        "Enable Template Insights",
+			Description: "Enable the collection and display of template insights along with the associated API endpoints. This will also enable aggregating these insights into daily active users, application usage, and transmission rates for overall deployment stats. When disabled, these values will be zero, which will also affect what the bottom deployment overview bar displays. Disabling will also prevent Prometheus collection of these values.",


I think this is everything affected by disabling collection of these stats. I am not sure I worded it clearly though, I went through so many revisions 😅

It's on the verbose side, but I think it captures everything. Nice work. Just to be annoying though, I will propose the idea of separating template insights and agent stats, i.e. having two options. I think that would be clearer since the naming is lossy. The name "enable template insights" affects deployment stats but it's not captured outside the description.

Food for thought, not a requirement.

Yeah I 100% agree that is way better but that will also require a refactor of stats right, since those deployment stats are derived from the agent stats. We would have to anonymize the stats, or have some other way to aggregate them without storing the individual stats.

We did consider anonymization but decided for now we would go with disabling (for context the client this is for is unable to store personal employee data which apparently includes these stats).

Possibly we could rename this flag to something that more fully encapsulates both. --usage-stats-disable maybe?? --stats-disable? Separate --stats-app-enable and --stats-agent-enable maybe? Going to merge for now but I will follow up with another PR if we have a good name (I will bring it up in the mango standup too and see if there are any ideas).

mafredri

One suggestion, one question, otherwise 👍🏻 for BE!

mafredri · 2025-12-11T13:44:16Z

cli/testdata/coder_server_--help.golden

+          be zero, which will also affect what the bottom deployment overview
+          bar displays. Disabling will also prevent Prometheus collection of


Suggested change

be zero, which will also affect what the bottom deployment overview

bar displays. Disabling will also prevent Prometheus collection of

be zero. Disabling this will also disable traffic and connection insights in the deployment stats shown to admins in the bottom bar of the Coder UI.

Disabling will also prevent Prometheus collection of

Ignore indentation.

I might be misunderstanding but this seems to be correctly generated, when I use --help it wraps in the same way.

This wasn't about formatting, just me suggesting alternative wording.

mafredri · 2025-12-11T13:46:16Z

coderd/workspacestats/reporter.go

+	}

-	// update prometheus metrics
+	// update prometheus metrics (even if template insights are disabled)


Hmm, is this conflicting with the help text added to the deployment flag?

Disabling will also prevent Prometheus collection of [...]

Honestly I could be a bit wrong, but there is a variable called "metrics" which includes things like cpu, memory, etc and those are still emitted (we do not store or display them with template insights or agent stats as far as I could tell).

site/src/pages/TemplatePage/TemplateInsightsPage/TemplateInsightsPage.tsx

aslilac · 2025-12-11T21:10:54Z

site/src/pages/TemplatePage/TemplateInsightsPage/TemplateInsightsPage.tsx

+				{!error && !users && <Loader css={{ height: "100%" }} />}
+				{(error || users?.length === 0) && <NoDataAvailable error={error} />}


I kinda wish we were showing the errors/loading states with early returns or ternarys or something so that these weren't all just independent conditions where we cross our fingers that they're all properly in sync

Yeah I wanted to minimize the diff but this felt janky to me too. I am a bit late on this so going to merge but I will follow up with another PR.

github-actions bot assigned code-asher Nov 26, 2025

code-asher force-pushed the asher/disable-template-insights branch 6 times, most recently from 46fd3d8 to f5abd4e Compare November 26, 2025 04:52

code-asher requested a review from mafredri December 2, 2025 21:57

bpmct added the doc-check Assign this label to PRs to check for any doc changes. label Dec 4, 2025

coder-doc-bot bot mentioned this pull request Dec 5, 2025

Document Template Insights feature #21138

Open

bpmct mentioned this pull request Dec 7, 2025

docs: add Template Insights documentation #21150

Open

bpmct added a commit that referenced this pull request Dec 7, 2025

docs: document --disable-template-insights flag

a3ba939

Proactively documents the --disable-template-insights flag from PR #20940 before it merges, ensuring documentation is ready when the feature lands.

code-asher added 4 commits December 9, 2025 16:51

feat: Add a flag to disable storing agent and app stats

c87fffc

This effectively disables template insights, as there will be no data. Prometheus remains unaffected; this only prevents our own storage of the stats.

Fix codersdk get user status counts

deb0bd0

It takes a timezone offset, not a date.

Disable /insights endpoint according to flag

93e6c38

Handle /insights errors on dashboard

092cca4

Now errors show up in the middle of the panel. This will include if the insights are disabled.

code-asher force-pushed the asher/disable-template-insights branch from f5abd4e to 092cca4 Compare December 10, 2025 01:51

code-asher removed the request for review from mafredri December 10, 2025 01:51

mafredri reviewed Dec 10, 2025

View reviewed changes

code-asher added 4 commits December 10, 2025 18:33

Rename to templateInsights.enable and improve description

7076956

Link GH issue to TODO

aa07160

s/DisableDatabaseStorage/DisableDatabaseInserts

be20e54

Use 404 instead of 403 for disabled endpoint

3535048

code-asher commented Dec 11, 2025

View reviewed changes

code-asher requested review from aslilac and mafredri December 11, 2025 03:48

mafredri approved these changes Dec 11, 2025

View reviewed changes

aslilac approved these changes Dec 11, 2025

View reviewed changes

Remove unnecessary ?

54e725e

code-asher force-pushed the asher/disable-template-insights branch from 29eb053 to 54e725e Compare December 14, 2025 02:45

code-asher enabled auto-merge (squash) December 14, 2025 02:49

code-asher merged commit 27f0413 into main Dec 14, 2025
53 of 56 checks passed

code-asher deleted the asher/disable-template-insights branch December 14, 2025 03:00

github-actions bot locked and limited conversation to collaborators Dec 14, 2025

		be zero, which will also affect what the bottom deployment overview
		bar displays. Disabling will also prevent Prometheus collection of

		{!error && !users && <Loader css={{ height: "100%" }} />}
		{(error \|\| users?.length === 0) && <NoDataAvailable error={error} />}

feat: add flag to disable template insights #20940

feat: add flag to disable template insights #20940

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bpmct commented Dec 4, 2025

📚 Documentation Check

✅ Updates Needed

📝 New Docs Needed

📋 Already Documented

📖 Recommendation

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