Prisme Analytics

Prisme Analytics is a self‑hosted, privacy‑centric web analytics platform that delivers real‑time insights without the baggage of cookies or third‑party trackers. At its core, it captures user interactions through a lightweight JavaScript snippet (≈2 kB) or a 35‑byte image pixel for no‑JS environments, forwarding anonymized events to a backend that aggregates metrics and exposes them via Grafana dashboards. The system is engineered for high throughput, automatically filtering bots and scrapers so that the data you see represents genuine human traffic.

Architecture & Technical Stack

The application is built in Go, leveraging the language’s concurrency model for efficient event ingestion. The core service exposes a RESTful API (/api/v1/...) that accepts JSON payloads for custom events, pageviews, and UTM parameters. Data persistence is handled by PostgreSQL (or compatible SQL engines) for structured event storage, while a time‑series database such as TimescaleDB (PostgreSQL extension) or an external InfluxDB can be configured for high‑cardinality metrics. The front end is a Grafana instance that connects to the same data source, providing rich dashboards, user and team management, and multi‑organization support out of the box. Containerization is fully supported via Docker images (prismelabs/analytics), and a Helm chart can be used for Kubernetes deployments, simplifying scaling to thousands of concurrent users.

Core Capabilities & APIs

• Event Tracking API: /api/v1/events accepts custom events with arbitrary payloads, enabling developers to instrument actions beyond pageviews (e.g., form submissions, button clicks).
• No‑Script Pixel: /api/v1/noscript/events/pageviews allows tracking in environments where JavaScript is disabled.
• UTM Extraction: The service parses UTM parameters automatically, exposing campaign performance metrics without additional code.
• Bot & Scraper Filtering: Built‑in heuristics and configurable thresholds ensure that only human traffic is counted.
• GraphQL / REST Integration: While the primary API is REST, Grafana’s data source plugins can query metrics via SQL or InfluxQL, giving developers flexible access patterns.
• Webhooks & Callbacks: Developers can subscribe to event streams or metric thresholds via webhooks for real‑time integrations (e.g., triggering alerts in Slack or custom dashboards).

Deployment & Infrastructure

Prisme is designed for self‑hosting with minimal operational overhead. A single Docker container runs the analytics engine, while Grafana can be bundled in a sidecar or deployed separately. The Docker image is lightweight (≈120 MB) and supports multi‑stage builds, ensuring fast startup times. For production workloads, the platform scales horizontally by running multiple instances behind a load balancer; PostgreSQL can be replicated using streaming replication, and Grafana supports clustering for high availability. The application’s stateless nature means that adding or removing nodes does not require data migration, simplifying autoscaling in cloud environments.

Integration & Extensibility

• Plugin System: Grafana’s extensive plugin ecosystem allows developers to add custom panels, data sources, and authentication providers without touching the core Prisme code.
• API Extensions: The open API can be extended via middleware in Go, enabling custom authentication schemes (OAuth2, JWT) or additional data enrichment steps.
• Webhooks: Built‑in support for event webhooks lets external services consume analytics in real time, facilitating integrations with CI/CD pipelines, marketing automation tools, or custom monitoring dashboards.
• SDKs & Client Libraries: While not mandatory, the project encourages community contributions of SDKs in languages like JavaScript, Python, or Go to simplify event emission.

Developer Experience

The project’s documentation is organized into a comprehensive site (/docs) that covers installation, configuration, API reference, and best practices. The GitHub repository follows semantic versioning and includes a CONTRIBUTING guide that welcomes pull requests, ensuring the codebase remains maintainable. Community support is active on Twitter and GitHub Discussions, where developers can ask questions or propose new features. The open‑source license (MIT) guarantees that all core functionalities are free to use, modify, and distribute, eliminating vendor lock‑in.

Use Cases

• Privacy‑First Websites: E‑commerce sites or SaaS platforms that must comply with GDPR, PECR, and Shrems II can deploy Prisme to collect analytics without cookies.
• SPA & PWA Analytics: Modern front‑ends using React, Vue, or Svelte can integrate the tracking script with minimal configuration, benefiting from automatic pushState routing support.
• Internal Metrics: Companies that want to monitor internal web applications or intranets can host Prisme on-premises, ensuring data stays within corporate boundaries.
• Education & Research: Academic projects that require detailed user interaction data without compromising privacy can leverage Prisme’s open API and self‑hosting model.

Advantages Over Alternatives

Prisme offers a compelling mix of performance, flexibility, and compliance. Its event ingestion is lightweight (≈2 kB script), reducing page load impact, while the Go backend handles high traffic without throttling. The built‑in bot filtering removes noise that other analytics platforms struggle with, delivering cleaner data for analysis. Because the entire stack is open source and containerized, developers can customize or extend every layer—something proprietary analytics services cannot match. Finally, the Grafana integration gives instant access to powerful dashboards and alert