Privacy and your data

“Local-first” is a claim that is worth nothing without specifics, so here are the specifics.

There is no telemetry

The app collects no analytics, sends no usage data, phones no home, and has no crash reporter. Not “anonymised” telemetry, not “opt-out” telemetry — none. We do not know how many people use this, and the only way we learn anything is when someone tells us.

That is a deliberate trade. If it ever changes it will be opt-in, documented here, and announced in a release note — not slipped into a minor version.

Where your files are

Everything the app creates lives under a storage root you choose, which you can change in Settings.

<your storage root>/
  library/
    parts/           one readable .json per part
    symbols/         schematic symbols
    footprints/      land patterns
    datasheets/      cached PDFs
    libraries.json   your library groupings
  projects/
    <project name>/
      project.json
      chats/
      artifacts/     generated .glb, .step, reports
  .index/            a rebuildable SQLite cache

Two properties worth knowing:

The files are the truth. Plain, readable JSON you can open, diff, and commit to your own version control. Not a database you need this app to interpret.

The index is disposable. .index/ exists only to make search fast. Delete it and the app rebuilds it from the files. It is never the authoritative copy of anything.

If you link a project to a folder of your own, that project’s state — including its chat history — is written into <your folder>/.hardware-agent-studio/, so copying the folder to another machine brings the work with it.

Where your API keys are

In your operating system’s keychain — Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, the Secret Service on Linux. Never in a config file, never in the project files, never in a log.

This matters for a specific reason: the app is open source and your project folder is something you might well commit to git or hand to someone. Nothing you can accidentally share contains a key.

What actually leaves your machine

Three things, and nothing else.

Prompts to the model provider you chose. When you search for a part, extract its pins, generate design guidance or ask a question, the app sends text to that provider’s API. That text contains the part number, extracted datasheet text relevant to the request, and — for design guidance — the actual page contents being analysed. It does not send your board file, your schematic, your project names, or your parts library.

Datasheet PDF downloads. When you confirm a part, the app fetches its datasheet from the manufacturer’s URL and caches it locally. That is an ordinary HTTPS GET to whatever host the datasheet lives on.

Community library searches, if you use them. Searching community footprint libraries queries GitHub’s public API for the specific repositories on a curated allowlist. Optional, and only when you use that feature.

Your board files never leave your machine. kicad-cli and FreeCAD run as local processes on your own computer; nothing about your geometry is uploaded to anything.

If you want nothing to leave at all

Choose Ollama as your provider and point it at a model running on your own machine. The app treats it exactly like any other provider, and no prompt leaves your computer.

Two caveats, stated honestly. Datasheet downloads still reach the manufacturer’s server, because that is where the PDF is — you can avoid this by not using features that fetch one. And local models are generally weaker at the structured extraction this app leans on, so expect more failed extractions than with a frontier model. That is a real trade, not a marketing footnote.

What we cannot promise

The provider you choose has its own data policy, and it governs what happens to your prompts once they arrive. Whether they train on your requests, how long they retain them, and who can see them are questions for them, not us. The app picks the provider you configured; it cannot make privacy guarantees on that provider’s behalf.

Read your provider’s terms. If that matters to you, use Ollama.