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The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

akshaychugh.xyz

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Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#41

Post by staplers »

embedding-shape wrote: post #28
Kwpolska wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you assume good intentions of any business in this day and age?

Because I'm a nice person, and want to give other nice people the benefit of the doubt. And most businesses are run by people after all, not hard to imagine at least some of them would be "nice people" too. And frankly, the alternative would be too mentally taxing. So in the camp of "Good until proven otherwise" is where I remain for now.

  want to give other nice people the benefit of the doubt
Maybe the most naive, sheltered thing I've read on this site. If we were talking about an individual OSS maintainer, sure, that's possible. But large corporations have been doing the opposite for as long as they've existed and there's evidence presented to that fact nearly everyday.

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#42

Post by wswope »

stephantul wrote: post #40
andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

The idea that a random uuid == anonymous, and would protect users from having entire bash commands piped through is preposterous, and you know it.

Cmon now — I’m a rabid privacy nut but this is unfair given the context of:

> Prompt telemetry is opt-in and off by default. The hook asks once; if you don't answer, session-end cleanup marks it as disabled. We don't collect prompt text unless you explicitly say yes.

The UUID part is just one accessory layer, and something plenty of other players in the ecosystem don’t bother to stick to.

Feels like actually bothering to ask users for consent is what got them burned here, when I’d say it’s at least an improvement that they’re asking at all. Many products don’t, and users never bother to turn it off because they don’t know and don’t care.

I think this whole UX is deeply misguided but at least has plausibly benevolent intent.

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#43

Post by slopinthebag »

andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

> We have been super heads down

"Claude, stop messing around and fix the bug!!!! I said no mistakes!!!"

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#44

Post by duckmysick »

andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

Why don't have all the telemetry opt-in instead? So that nothing is collected by default and then having `VERCEL_PLUGIN_TELEMETRY=on` enables it.

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#45

Post by berkay »

andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

I really thought that this was unintentional. It's hard to believe that you think this is fine to do because one can opt out. Take it for whatever it's worth, this is not OK. It is really bad. You want people's data to help you make your product better? Make it opt in and ask for their help.

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#46

Post by raincole »

andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

Wait, so you admit this is intentional, not a bug?

We need to internet archive this comment.

Edit: and I suggest not downvoting and burying the parent comment. People should be aware that this is an intended behavior from Vercel.

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#49

Post by akshay2603 »

andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

OP here, ty for your response.

Few reflections:

1. Asking for prompts permission is a big big no - i still don't understand why you need it. The greenfield example feels like a stretch but I get that it is a business call and Claude Code enables you to do this today. I am just more pissed with them here. I am not at all comfortable with any plugin getting this info, no matter how much I like them.

2. The way you ask this permission feels like a solid dark pattern. I understand it is a harness limitation and Claude code should fix it (as I mentioned in the post) but you choosing to ship this is just wrong. Thank you for agreeing to rethink the wording.

3. Basic telemetry being default on and plugin collecting data across non vercel projects made me super uncomfortable. Again, i understand it's a business call but I guess I had higher hopes from vercel.

Re: The Vercel plugin on Claude Code wants to read your prompts

#50

Post by dminik »

andrewqu wrote: post #39

Engineer at Vercel here who worked on the plugin! We have been super heads down to the initial versions of the plugin and constantly improving it. Always super happy to hear feedback and track the changes on GitHub. I want to address the notes here: The plugin is always on, once installed on an agent harness. We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects…

> We do not want to limit to only detected Vecel project, because we also want to help with greenfield projects "Help build me an AI chat app".

Is the intention here that the AI will then suggest building a NextJS app? I can't quite describe why, but this feels very wrong to me.

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