Most ghost events are not born in the analytics tool. They are born in a pull request that shipped a screen with a logging call named after the file: PaywallView, NewPaywallView2, button_click. The retrospective then tries to invent a verb. By then the stream already contains three ways to say the same human act, and a fourth that fires on a preview build you forgot to gate.
In the Retention Telemetry Studio we ask for the name in the ticket, beside the copy and the acceptance criteria. Not a novel. One object, one verb, and the properties a decision will actually read. If nobody can name the decision, the event does not ship.
Object first, then the verb
Start with the thing in the product: trial, basket, episode, route, claim. Then the verb the user performed: started, paid, completed, abandoned. User_interacted_with_paywall is a mood. trial_started is a claim you can reproduce next Tuesday. Properties belong only where they change a sentence: source, plan, platform. A property named isInteresting is the developer thinking out loud.
The ticket block we use
Four lines, nothing more: event name; when it fires (and when it must not); identity assumed at that moment; the one dashboard sentence it is allowed to support. Engineers paste it into the tracking plan. Designers learn that a new screen is not automatically a new event. Product learns that “we will instrument later” is how screen_view colonises the ledger.
Collisions
If two tickets propose the same verb for different objects, that is a gift. You have found an overloaded word. Split the object rather than adding a boolean. If iOS and Android disagree on casing, pick one house style and treat the other as a defect, not a “platform difference.” Tool migrations fail because of this trivia, not because of missing charts.
What we do not do
We do not auto-generate names from screen trees. We do not celebrate a thousand events as “rich telemetry.” Richness is a decision that can be restated without opening a colour palette. If your release cannot wait for a name, it cannot wait for a trustworthy funnel either — ship the screen, hold the event, and say so in the notes.