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hone-client

The send side of Hone. Install it in a Laravel app you want to monitor. It redirects that app's own laravel/nightwatch telemetry to your self-hosted Hone server.

Read-only mirror. This repository is a read-only split of the artisan-build/hone monorepo. Issues and pull requests are disabled here — please open them on the monorepo.

What it does

hone-client is thin by design — its only job is to redirect Nightwatch's output to your Hone app.

• Rebinds the Nightwatch ingest transport through a service provider. Nightwatch exposes its ingest as a swappable object on the container-bound Core; hone-client replaces it with one that batches records and POSTs them over HTTPS to your Hone server. No fork of laravel/nightwatch, no daemon, no on-disk buffer.
• Batches and POSTs a versioned envelope to HONE_URL, authenticating with HONE_TOKEN.
• Fails open. If the endpoint is unreachable, records are dropped after a bounded in-memory buffer. Your app must never block, slow, or error because telemetry shipping failed. The POST happens during request termination — after the response is sent.
• Octane-safe — no per-request static state leakage.

It does not do sampling (that lives in your Nightwatch config) and it adds no redaction layer (see Privacy).

Activation — by presence of config, no boolean

The rebind fires only when both HONE_URL and HONE_TOKEN are present and non-empty.

The kill switch is removing or commenting the HONE_* values.

Installation

hone:install wires the app for tracking: it sets HONE_URL / HONE_TOKEN, pins hone-client at a caret constraint (^X), and confirms your Nightwatch setup will activate. It is idempotent and asks for consent before touching any file.

Setting up with a coding agent (skill)

This package ships a configuring-hone-client skill so a skill-aware coding agent (Claude Code, etc.) can do the whole setup for you. After composer require, it lives at:

Point your agent at that file (or copy the configuring-hone-client/ directory into your project's .claude/skills/) and ask it to "configure the Hone client." The skill walks through the prerequisites, hone:install, verifying the Nightwatch transport rebind is active (the step that actually proves it's working), setting the NIGHTWATCH_DEPLOY deploy dimension, confirming receipt on the Hone server over MCP, and the common "telemetry isn't arriving" failure modes.

Source-app environment

You do not need a NIGHTWATCH_TOKEN. Nightwatch's collection is gated by NIGHTWATCH_ENABLED (default true), not the token — and Hone never talks to Nightwatch's cloud, so no real Nightwatch credential is required.

On Laravel Cloud: do not enable the built-in Nightwatch toggle — it runs Cloud's managed agent and ships to Nightwatch's cloud, which conflicts with the rebind. Install laravel/nightwatch + hone-client and let the rebind own the transport. Set NIGHTWATCH_*_SAMPLE_RATE explicitly and high — storage is your only cost.

Keeping in sync — hone:update

After any major update, run:

It calls {HONE_URL}/capabilities, compares the hone-contracts major you have installed against the majors your Hone server supports, and either gives the all-clear or tells you to update your Hone app first. The canonical upgrade order is always: update Hone, then update your apps.

hone-client also emits a one-line local nudge when the installed hone-contracts major changes, reminding you to run hone:update. It's zero-network — just a reminder.

Client identity

hone-client carries artisan-build/bfc-client, which gives this installation a stable, opaque identity so the Hone server can attribute an ingest token to a specific install.

• Every telemetry POST to HONE_URL carries the identity in an X-BfC-Client-Id header, alongside the HONE_TOKEN bearer auth. The identity is a label, never a credential — it grants nothing on its own. It is only ever sent to your Hone server.
• If the identity cannot be resolved, telemetry still ships — without the header. Attribution is never worth dropping telemetry for.
• The identity defaults to a UUID generated once and persisted to storage_path('app/bfc-client/identity'). On an ephemeral filesystem set BFC_CLIENT_IDENTITY explicitly, or the identity churns on every deploy.
• bfc-client also registers an unauthenticated, throttled GET /bfc-client proof-of-life route that returns the package name and this identity. Move it with BFC_CLIENT_PROOF_OF_LIFE_PATH or disable it with BFC_CLIENT_PROOF_OF_LIFE=false.

Privacy

Hone adds no redaction layer; redaction belongs in your Nightwatch config, before transmission, and hone-client ships its recommended defaults off:

• Query bindings are never captured — SQL arrives parameterized; bound values never enter the pipeline.
• Request-body capture stays off (the Nightwatch default).
• For apps using raw SQL literals or PII-bearing exception messages, configure Nightwatch's redactQueries / exception-message hooks.

Because stored telemetry is parameterized and pre-redacted upstream, it is safe to feed to an LLM. That is the point.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.