What stays on your computer

Your agents, what they know about you, your conversations, files, notes and lists are kept in Archie’s folder on your computer. Keys you paste sit in your computer’s password store (Keychain on a Mac, Credential Manager on Windows), where we have no way to read them. Each one goes only to the company it belongs to.

What goes to your AI company

To answer you, your agent sends the AI company you connected your message, the recent conversation, what it knows about you, and what it read for you, such as an email. It goes straight from your computer to that company, on your own account. Web searches run on that company’s servers.

Until you connect an AI account of your own, the AI is ours: on our free credits, or on the plan with the AI included. Each request then passes through our server, which writes down what it cost, never what it said, keeps no copy, and sends it on to Anthropic.

Email and text replies never run on our AI, because the people who wrote to you never agreed to that. Connecting your own AI account stops all of this from your agent’s next start.

What each AI company says about training

As each company’s own terms read in August 2026:

  • Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI (ChatGPT) and Groq say what Archie sends them is not used for training.
  • Google (Gemini) and Mistral say the same of their paid tiers only. Their free tiers train on what you send, and your billing with them says which you have.
  • xAI (Grok): we have not been able to check its terms, so read them yourself before you connect it.
  • DeepSeek’s privacy policy says it uses personal data to train its technology, and stores it in China.

An AI company you add yourself, under Another provider in Archie, is under its own terms. Each company’s own words, with a link to its policy.

What Otian AI holds

  • Your email address, and whether you have a current plan.
  • Which version of the Terms you agreed to, and when.
  • Which version and edition of Archie you run, on a Mac or Windows, and when it last checked in. It is one record, rewritten at most every six hours.
  • Crash and error reports: where in our code something broke, the error line, and for an add-on, its name and the tool that failed. Never what you wrote.
  • On our AI, a ledger of what each request cost, and a scrambled one-way stamp of the computer and internet address that claimed free credits. We can tell that two stamps match, and never read a computer or an address out of one.
  • Second-factor sign-in records, invoices for a guided session if you book one, and a record of any checkout that was refused (the account, the country, the amount).
  • Your address on our weekly letter’s list, marked on or off.
  • If you turn on phone access, the messages between your computer and your phone, sealed with a key we never receive. Three things about each one are not sealed: when it was left, which version of Archie left it, and whether it was picked up. We also keep the name your phone reported when it paired.
  • How many times each add-on was added, with no record of who added it.

The trust page keeps the current list. Archie also checks your plan with us each time it opens and can reach us, sending your account ID and a sign-in token.

How long: your phone deletes each message once it has read it, and your computer clears any it never came back for a day after it was answered, the next time Archie is running. How long we keep the rest is in the privacy policy’s table.

Chat apps and Archie Mobile

If your agent answers you in Telegram, Discord, Slack or Matrix, what it says crosses that company’s servers like any other message there. The exception is iMessage, which Apple encrypts end to end and which works only on a Mac. Windows has no iMessage.

Archie Mobile, our phone app, locks every message with a key only your computer and your phone hold, so we hold those messages and cannot read them. Phone access is off until you turn it on. Whoever holds the phone holds the key, so disconnect a lost one as below.

How to turn off what Archie sends

In Archie, Settings and Account are at the bottom of the left sidebar.

  • An account or app: on your agent’s Connections tab, under Email, calendar, files or under Apps, press the trash can beside it. Its sign-in or key stays in Settings, under Saved keys, until you remove it there.
  • A chat app: remove its token in Settings, under Saved keys. Your agent still answers in the Archie window.
  • Your AI company: change it on your agent’s Setup tab, under AI account.
  • Crash reports, error reports and the version check-in: in Settings, under Privacy, turn off Send crash reports. Anything waiting to be sent is deleted.
  • Your phone, or a lost one: on your agent’s Setup tab, under Chat app, press Archie Mobile, then Disconnect every phone. That also empties the sealed mailbox.
  • Everything on your computer: on the Account page, under Resetting Archie, press Reset Archie and type reset. Your agents and saved keys are erased and every phone is disconnected. Open Archie at login and waking the computer for routines stay as they are. On Windows, the uninstaller’s box for removing Archie’s data leaves your saved keys behind, so reset first.
  • Your Otian AI account, or the weekly letter: sign in on your account page to delete the account or turn the letter off.

What this page is not

This page says what Archie does. It is not a compliance certification, and it does not make Archie HIPAA or GDPR compliant, because what you send still goes to an AI company.

To keep a copy, print this page from your browser. The same words are in Archie: open Resources in the left sidebar, then Guides, then Where your information goes.