Actors

An actor is anything that sends telemetry to Scout Trails: a developer’s laptop running Claude Code, a CI runner running Codex CLI, a shared build agent. Each actor holds at most one ingest key, and every session and tool call that arrives with that key is attributed to that actor. Actors are not members: a member is a person who signs in to the dashboard, and an actor is a sender of telemetry. Creating an actor never gives anyone a sign-in, and inviting a person never creates an actor.

Any member can create, rename and deactivate actors and manage their ingest keys; none of these actions need the admin role.

One actor per machine or agent

Create a separate actor for each machine or agent you instrument, rather than sharing one key. The dashboard’s per-actor views, the Scope control and teams can only tell apart what you have kept apart. Separate actors also let you retire one machine’s key without touching the others.

The Actors & ingest keys page

Open Manage → Actors & ingest keys. The page has a New actor card and an All actors table. The table header shows the totals, for example “5 total · 4 with a key”.

Each row in All actors shows:

Actors are listed alphabetically by display name. Deactivated actors are not listed.

If the organization has no actors, the page says “No actors yet. Create one above to get an ingest key, then point an agent at it.”

Actor fields

• Display name is how the actor appears throughout the dashboard, in the Scope control, and on team rosters. Renaming an actor changes the name shown on its past telemetry as well as new telemetry.
• Kind describes what the actor is. It is shown on the Actors page and team rosters.
• Role label is a free-text tag, such as release or ci, shown under the display name and in the Role label column of team rosters.
• Telemetry id is a random 43-character token, unique within the organization. Scout Trails stamps it on every session and tool call the actor sends. It never changes, not when you rename the actor and not when you rotate or revoke its key, so the actor’s history stays continuous. A deactivated actor’s telemetry id is never given to another actor.

Creating an actor

1. Open Manage → Actors & ingest keys.
2. In the New actor card, enter a Display name, for example “Dana’s laptop” or “CI build agent”.
3. Choose a Kind: Agent or Human.
4. Optionally enter a Role label.
5. Select Create actor.

The actor is created with an ingest key already issued. A dialog titled Ingest key issued for name shows the key, with Copy and Done buttons. The key also stays visible in the All actors table afterwards. Put it into your agent’s configuration as described in Agent instrumentation.

If you leave Display name empty, the page shows “A display name is required.”

Renaming an actor

1. On the actor’s row, select Rename.
2. In the Rename name dialog, edit Display name and Role label.
3. Select Save, or Cancel to close the dialog without changes.

The banner confirms “name updated.” Clearing Role label removes it.

Revoke key, Rotate key and Deactivate

These three actions all stop a key from working, but they leave the actor in different states.

None of these actions ask for confirmation.

Revoke key

Use this to pause an actor, for example when a laptop is lost or a key may have leaked, while keeping the actor ready to use again.

1. On the actor’s row, select Revoke key.

The banner confirms “name can no longer send telemetry.” The Ingest key column shows none and the row’s Rotate key button becomes Issue key. To bring the actor back, select Issue key and configure the agent with the new key.

Rotate key

Use this to replace a key while keeping the same actor. See Rotating a key.

Deactivate

Use this to retire an actor for good, for example when a machine is decommissioned.

1. On the actor’s row, select Deactivate.

The banner confirms “name is deactivated. Its ingest key is revoked and it no longer appears in scope filters; its past telemetry is unchanged.”

After deactivation:

• The actor’s key is revoked and anything still sending with it is rejected.
• The actor disappears from the Actors page, the Scope control, and team pages’ Roster and Add an actor list.
• Sessions and tool calls it already sent stay in the dashboard under its display name. When a team it belonged to is selected in Scope, its past telemetry still counts toward that team.

Deactivation cannot be undone from the dashboard. To start sending from the same machine again, create a new actor; it gets a new telemetry id, so its telemetry is recorded separately from the deactivated actor’s.

Messages you can see

In this section

• Ingest keys