2026-03-28 — Analytics instrumentation sprint

What shipped today

Today was a focused analytics cleanup session. The PostHog instrumentation that was audited and specced out across 15+ issues earlier this week got systematically implemented, verified, and closed. The work fell into three themes: fixing what was broken, removing what was phantom, and adding what was missing.

The biggest fix was discovering that onboarding_status was never programmatically set to 'completed' for new users (#1830). The onboarding wizard page had been removed months ago, but the bootstrap handler — which runs after wizard completion — never actually flipped the status. This was a real bug affecting user lifecycle tracking, not just a telemetry gap. The fix went into onboarding_bootstrap.py alongside the onboarding.completed PostHog event.

The re-engagement drip system (#1816) got full telemetry wiring: reengagement.email_sent fires server-side after each successful send, and CTA clicks now route through a new tracking redirect endpoint (/api/v2/track/reengagement/click) that captures reengagement.cta_clicked before redirecting. This mirrors the existing briefing email click pattern. The auth flows (#1810) also got signup/login/reset tracking events added to the web app.

Several issues turned out to be phantom — events documented in TELEMETRY.md that referenced features that don’t exist in the current app. Article bookmarks (#1825) are a legacy Rails feature never ported. Feed management (#1824) has no web UI. The PostHog identify timing concern (#1815) was a non-issue since cookies persist through OAuth redirects on the same domain. The proxy verification (#1819) confirmed zero PostHog requests leak to external domains. All of these were closed with explanations and TELEMETRY.md was updated to reflect reality.

Completed

• #1810 — Add PostHog tracking to signup/login/reset flows
• #1811 — Fix event name mismatches between TELEMETRY.md and code
• #1812 — Add missing properties to PostHog events
• #1813 — Remove phantom events documented but never implemented
• #1814 — Sync 11+ undocumented events into TELEMETRY.md
• #1815 — PostHogIdentify timing (closed: not a real issue)
• #1816 — Re-engagement funnel events (email_sent + cta_clicked)
• #1817 — Clean up legacy underscore-named events
• #1818 — Disable autocapture (already done, verified)
• #1819 — Verify /ingest proxy in production
• #1820 — Unused Eclectis PostHog project (closed: separate project)
• #1821 — Add changed_fields to settings.profile_updated
• #1822 — Remove stale content_type refs from TELEMETRY.md
• #1824 — Feed management events (closed: phantom, no UI exists)
• #1825 — Article bookmark events (closed: phantom, legacy feature)
• #1826 — Add onboarding.completed event
• #1827 — Delete test/junk events from PostHog
• #1828 — Audit lost tracking from legacy event rename
• #1830 — Fix onboarding_status never set to completed

Release progress

• v1.5: 49/50 closed (1 remaining: #1805 — parent issue for analytics instrumentation)
• v2.0 — Product simplification: complete (25/25)
• v2.1 — Content model refactor: complete (15/15)
• v2.2 — Simplified pipeline: complete (3/3)

Carry-over

• #1805 (ensure PostHog fully instrumented) can likely be closed now — all child issues are done
• #1829 (backlog) — archive legacy underscore events in PostHog dashboard
• #1823 (backlog) — deferred re-engagement events (user_reactivated, sequence_completed, opted_out)

Risks

• No web test suite: The web app has no test script in package.json. All web-side tracking changes (auth events, settings tracking, CTA redirect endpoint) are verified by lint only. A future regression could silently break tracking.
• Production database in dev: All PostHog event names were verified against production data. Any accidental tracking calls during dev would hit the real PostHog project.

Flags and watch-outs

• The re-engagement CTA redirect endpoint uses NEXT_PUBLIC_POSTHOG_KEY (same pattern as briefing click tracker). If this key rotates, both endpoints need updating.
• TELEMETRY.md is now the accurate source of truth — phantom events have been cleaned out. Future features should add events to the catalog before implementing.

Next session

• Close #1805 (parent analytics issue) — all child work is done, verify nothing remains
• Consider promoting #1829 (archive legacy underscore events) from backlog if PostHog dashboard cleanup is desired
• The analytics sprint is complete — shift focus to whatever Paul queues next (likely apple app work per v1-apple milestone, or new feature development)