Autocapture

Autocapture (also called codeless or auto-tracking) records every click, pageview, form submission, and input change automatically, without an engineer writing a `track()` call for each event. Heap pioneered it; PostHog and Amplitude offer it too. The appeal for builders is speed and retroactivity: you install one snippet, and because the data was captured all along, you can define a new funnel today and immediately see last month's numbers — no waiting to instrument and backfill. The trade-off is noise and fragility. Autocaptured events are tied to CSS selectors and DOM structure, so a redesign silently renames or breaks them, and you get thousands of low-signal events you must still curate into meaningful actions. Practical note: most mature teams use a hybrid — autocapture for exploration and broad coverage, plus a deliberate tracking plan of hand-instrumented events for the metrics that matter (revenue, activation, key features). Don't send autocaptured PII from input fields; configure masking.