Performance and telemetry analysis of Trae IDE, ByteDance's VSCode fork

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Scope of the Analysis

  • OP compared Trae (ByteDance’s VSCode fork) to stock VSCode and other AI IDEs, focusing on RAM/process usage and network traffic.
  • Core claims: Trae is significantly heavier, sends extensive telemetry to ByteDance even when “disabled,” and community discussion about tracking was suppressed on Discord.

LLM-Assisted Writeup and Trust

  • Several commenters felt the report’s style was “LLM-like” and argued AI-written text is a heuristic for low-signal or potentially fabricated content.
  • Others countered that tooling doesn’t matter if the underlying data is sound; OP later clarified the core was human-written, with an LLM used to fix English and formatting.
  • Some said such use is fine but should be disclosed up front to avoid distrust and “AI slop” fatigue.

Telemetry vs. Spying

  • Big thread debating whether telemetry is “just analytics” or “literal spying.”
  • One camp: telemetry is standard across VSCode, browsers, Slack, etc.; typically anonymized, about feature usage, crashes, and environment; necessary for prioritization, bug-fixing, and funding arguments.
  • Other camp: opt‑out or non-functional toggles are inherently abusive; even “anonymized” data + machine IDs/IPs can be PII; any background networking not directly user-triggered is objectionable.
  • Some argue that disabling telemetry marking users as “interesting” or “having something to hide” is itself a problem.

ByteDance-Specific Concerns

  • Many say the behavior is not unique—Google/Microsoft/Meta do similar things—but route more concern at ByteDance due to its jurisdiction and geopolitical risks.
  • Others respond that surveillance by domestic firms/governments is at least as threatening; some deliberately prefer foreign providers for that reason.

Discord “Censorship” Dispute

  • OP framed deleted messages and a timeout as censorship of privacy discussion.
  • Trae community members claim the mute was an automated anti‑spam rule triggered by crypto-related terms (e.g., “token”), not by the word “track,” and that privacy topics are discussed openly.
  • Some see OP’s framing as overblown or attention-seeking; others view any chilling of telemetry discussion as a red flag regardless of cause.

Alternatives, Mitigations, and Ecosystem Lock-In

  • Many recommend switching to Neovim, Emacs, Helix, Zed, JetBrains, VSCodium, Theia, or terminal tooling with no telemetry.
  • Others note VSCode’s extension network effects and LSP/DAP ecosystem make moving hard.
  • Technical suggestions include Pi-hole, host-level blocking, and tools like OpenSnitch/Portmaster, though DNS-over-HTTPS and in-app resolvers weaken DNS-based blocking.