You'll noticeTier: how much it should matter to you
2Useful: my rating, 1 to 5
2Signal: worth watching, 1 to 5
TelemetryArea: what it touches
ImprovementsKind: in v2.1.282,
ImprovementsSection of the release
What
OpenTelemetry (OTEL) is the system Claude Code can use to send usage metrics and logs to a collector. A project's settings files, .claude/settings.json and .claude/settings.local.json, can set environment variables through an env block. They can no longer use it to send telemetry anywhere:
About 45 telemetry variables were added to the list project settings may not set. They include the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_* endpoint, header, protocol, certificate, key and insecure variants for traces, metrics, logs and profiles, the Prometheus host and port, CLAUDE_CODE_ENABLE_TELEMETRY, the OTEL_*_EXPORTER variables, and OTEL_LOG_USER_PROMPTS and OTEL_LOG_TOOL_CONTENT. Such a key is dropped with the message "project-scoped settings can't set this key. Set it in ~/.claude/settings.json or managed settings instead."
Values that turn telemetry off are still allowed: an OTEL_*_EXPORTER set to none, or an OTEL_LOG_* or content variable set to a false value such as 0. This does not apply when your own environment already sets that key.
User settings and managed settings are unaffected.
A new startup notification, project-telemetry-env, says "This project's settings set telemetry environment variables. Run /status to see which ones Claude Code ignored and which turned telemetry off." It checks every enabled settings source and is skipped under one internal condition the members did not resolve.
/status shows two new warnings: one listing the variables Claude Code ignored, explaining that a project's settings can only turn telemetry off, and one listing the variables that did turn it off. It also notes that user settings don't override a turn-off set in project settings.
Why
A cloned repository could previously point your telemetry, including your prompts, at its own collector. It now cannot, but it can still switch your telemetry off, and the new warning tells you when that happened. Teams that configured OTEL per project need to move that setup to user or managed settings.
How sure we are
Something disagreesSomething we can check disagrees with this entry, or the writer said they could not settle it.
The writer flagged doubtIt is not clear which kinds of session skip the startup notice.
Anthropic's release notes agreeAdded a startup notice, and /status and claude doctor entries, listing telemetry variables in a project's settings files that were ignored…
