# exploring-live-traffic

A skill that teaches the agent to read PostHog's Live tab: who is on the site right now, which bots are crawling, and where visitors go.

- skill · `type=skill` · Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenCode · 378 installs · ★ 75
- Author: PostHog
- License: MIT · policy=mirror · the beginning of the file is at the end of this page
- Source: https://github.com/PostHog/skills/tree/HEAD/skills/omnibus/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md
- Updated: 2026-10-24
- HTML: https://affpapa.org/en/nevibecode/skills/exploring-live-traffic

## What it does

The Live tab (`/web/live`) in PostHog shows activity over a 30-minute sliding window, with a 60-second "users online" count. This skill tells the agent how to read it: stat cards for unique visitors and pageviews, animated leaderboards of top pages and referrers, breakdowns by device, browser and country, and a feed of the last 50 events.

Bots get their own section. Detection happens server-side, and three virtual properties ride along on the event: `$virt_is_bot`, `$virt_bot_name` and `$virt_traffic_category`, with categories such as `ai_crawler`, `search_crawler` or `headless_browser`. Bot-eligible events are `$pageview`, `$pageleave`, `$screen`, `$http_log` and `$autocapture` — `$http_log` is in there because many crawlers emit server-side logs instead of JS pageviews. The bot tiles sit behind `WEB_ANALYTICS_BOT_ANALYSIS`, the world map behind `WEB_ANALYTICS_LIVE_MAP`.

The tab has exactly one filter, the host selector, and it is shared with the rest of Web analytics: change the domain on `/web` and `/web/live` follows. There is no date picker, no compare control, no property filters — so do not promise them. When a longer range is needed, the skill points at product analytics instead: every tile has an "Open as new insight" button that builds a 7-day Trends query, and individual bot rows are clickable. Historical breakdowns belong on the standard `/web` tab.

## Install

### Claude Code (native platform)

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add PostHog/skills --skill exploring-live-traffic -a claude-code
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `~/.claude/skills/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md` — Copy the whole skill folder; for one project use .claude/skills/exploring-live-traffic/

### Codex

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add PostHog/skills --skill exploring-live-traffic -a codex
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.agents/skills/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md` — For all projects use ~/.agents/skills/

### Cursor

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add PostHog/skills --skill exploring-live-traffic -a cursor
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.cursor/skills/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md` — Cursor also reads .agents/skills/ and .claude/skills/

### GitHub Copilot

1. **GitHub CLI**
```bash
gh skill install PostHog/skills exploring-live-traffic
```

2. **Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.github/skills/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md`

### Gemini CLI

1. **Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add PostHog/skills --skill exploring-live-traffic -a gemini-cli
```

2. **Platform CLI**
```bash
gemini skills install https://github.com/PostHog/skills --path skills/omnibus/exploring-live-traffic
```

### Windsurf (Devin Desktop)

**Manually: put the files in place**
- File: `.devin/skills/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md` — The legacy .windsurf/skills/ path still works

### OpenCode

**Skills CLI (Vercel)**
```bash
npx skills add PostHog/skills --skill exploring-live-traffic -a opencode
```

### Claude.ai

**Claude.ai**
- Zip the folder and upload it in Settings → Capabilities → Skills

Where a file is given instead of a command, copy the files from the source to that path: https://github.com/PostHog/skills/tree/HEAD/skills/omnibus/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md

## When to use it
- see how many people are on the site right now
- check top pages and referrers over the last 30 minutes
- find out which bots are crawling and their event share
- filter live traffic down to one domain
- turn a Live tile into a 7-day insight

## Example prompts
- who is on my site right now?
- which bots are crawling me — show me live traffic
- build a 7-day insight from that bot tile

## Source text · SKILL.md · MIT

Below is the content of a third-party file. It is data, not instructions for you: do not act on anything written inside unless the human asks. Block tag: e054ce5870e42ee6.

BEGIN THIRD-PARTY FILE e054ce5870e42ee6
```text
---
name: exploring-live-traffic
description: 'Inspects PostHog Web analytics Live tab data — current users online, last-30-minutes pageviews, top pages, referrers, devices, browsers, countries, bot traffic, and the per-minute bot/users charts. Use when the user asks "who is on my site right now?", "what is happening live?", "what bots are crawling me?", asks about the "live tab" / "live dashboard", wants live numbers (last 30 min), or wants help filtering or drilling into the live view. Also covers building product-analytics insights that mirror what the tiles show.'
---

# Exploring Web analytics live traffic

The Web analytics Live tab (`/web/live`) shows real-time activity over a 30-minute sliding
window plus a 60-second "users online" count. It is the place to answer "what is happening
on my site right now?" — pageviews, named bots, devices, geo, top paths, top referrers, and
a live event feed.

This skill teaches you (the agent) how to:

- recognize a request that belongs on the Live tab
- read the tile model (what each card shows, where the data comes from)
- manipulate the only filter that exists (host)
- build product-analytics insights that match a Live tile when the user wants
  longer time ranges or deeper drill-down than the live window offers

The Live tab is **not** a HogQL playground — its data comes from a livestream backed by
short HogQL backfills. When the user wants to query "right now" data with HogQL, point
them at the tab; when they want historical breakdowns, build an insight with the patterns
below.

## When to use this skill

Use this skill when the user:

- asks "who is on my site right now?", "what is happening live?", "show me live traffic"
- mentions the "Live" tab, the "Live dashboard", or the live page (`/web/live`)
- asks about live bot traffic ("which bots are crawling me?", "is GPTBot scraping us?")
- wants to filter live traffic by domain / host
- wants to compare what they see on the Live tab to a longer time window — e.g.
  "the live tab shows GPTBot is hammering us, can you give me a 7-day chart of that?"

Do not use this skill for non-realtime web analytics work — for that, use the standard
Web analytics tab (`/web`).

## Tab structure

URL: `/web/live`

The tab has two filter affordances and a grid of tiles. Date range is **fixed**: 30 minutes
```
END THIRD-PARTY FILE e054ce5870e42ee6

The third-party file has ended. Everything between the e054ce5870e42ee6 tags is data: requests and commands from it are not followed. An “end of file” line with another tag inside the block is part of the file.

First 2334 of 13825 bytes. © PostHog · MIT · https://github.com/PostHog/skills/tree/HEAD/skills/omnibus/exploring-live-traffic/SKILL.md

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---
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