Privacy Notice

Last updated July 29, 2026

Switchyard runs entirely on your Mac. This notice says what that means in practice.

What stays on your computer

Everything. The documents you put in, the records the tools write, the search index, the audit log, and the AI models themselves all live on this Mac. There is no account, no sign-in, and no server we operate.

What leaves your computer

Nothing. The models ship inside the app and run on your machine. The app's local engine talks only to itself over the loopback address 127.0.0.1. The app cannot download anything on its own — that path is disabled in code, and an automated test confirms zero connections to anything other than loopback during a run.

If you choose to run Ollama (a separate, local app) and point Switchyard at it, that connection is also loopback-only, machine-internal traffic.

What the app records — locally, for you

• Your documents and records — in the app's workspace folder, which you can open in Finder at any time.
• A search index of your content, so Ask can answer from your own records.
• An audit log of writes and grants, hash-chained so tampering shows. By default it records readable file paths; a settings switch logs a salted, non-reversible id instead.
• A token tally, used only to show you what running on-device saved versus a cloud API.

There is no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting, and no remote configuration.

Your controls

• Consent — automatic processing of watched folders does not begin until you acknowledge it once.
• Delete — removing a knowledge base deletes its files and index chunks and self-checks that nothing remains. A verifiable-deletion check can be run on demand.
• Retention — set a per-base retention window; older content is purged automatically.
• Export — back up everything to a single zip with a checksum manifest, any time.
• Encryption — the app warns if FileVault is off, and offers app-level encryption with a key kept in the macOS Keychain.

Connectors

Connectors (email, Slack, calendar, and the like) are off by default and never send anything on their own. If you turn one on, it stages a draft for you to review and acts only after you approve the exact content. Credentials are stripped from anything you share or export.

App Store data collection

Switchyard collects no data. The App Store privacy label reads "Data Not Collected" because there is nothing to collect it with: no analytics library, no crash reporter, no account system, no server.