Kitty phones home, providing information to the server. His insistence to keep this opt-out instead of opt-in, and abrasiveness towards whoever points this antifeature of Kitty out makes it all the more suspicious for me.
There are other terminal emulators, implementing the kitty graphics protocol. So your vendor lock in concern is moot, since there is more than a single vendor.
https://github.com/kovidgoyal/kitty/pull/3544