Reference
Security and privacy
What stays on your computer, what goes to ArkenOS's cloud and why, where your keys are kept, and who in your organization can see what.
ArkenOS runs on your computer: agents read and write files there, run commands there, and keep their chats there. Some things go to ArkenOS's cloud because they have to: your sign-in, your organization and plan, and the model calls agents make. This page says which is which, so you can decide what to put in a workspace and how to set up keys.
For the exact files and folders, see Where your data lives.
What stays on your computer
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Your project files, pages, artifacts, and agent memory and skills | Your workspace folder |
| Chats with agents and specialist runs | The app's data folder, agent/sessions/ |
| Channels, issues, page comments, automations and their run history | The app's data folder, local-runtime/arkenos.db |
| Integration settings, and their tokens and keys | agent/mcp/servers.json, with secrets in your system keychain |
| Web access settings and search keys | agent/web-search.json |
| Appearance and other per-device preferences | The app's data folder |
Commands agents run, Python they execute, and files they edit all happen on this computer, inside your user account's permissions.
What goes to the cloud, and why
| What | Why |
|---|---|
| Your account and sign-in | Signing in uses Amazon Cognito. It identifies you on every computer you use. |
| Organizations, members, teams, roles and invitations | So the same organization appears wherever its people sign in. |
| Plan and payments | Plans and credits are billed through Stripe. Card details are entered in Stripe's pages; ArkenOS never receives card numbers. |
| Model credentials | API keys and plan sign-ins you connect in Settings → Models are kept by your account's model service. See Model calls. |
| Model calls | Every request an agent makes to a model goes through the ArkenOS model gateway. |
| Usage records | Requests, tokens and credits per member, for the Usage page and billing. |
Model calls
When you're signed in, agents reach every model through the ArkenOS model gateway, including models on your own API keys and subscriptions. The gateway adds your agents' instructions, picks the model from your router tiers, attaches the credential you connected, and forwards the request to the provider. The provider then handles it under its own terms.
What a request contains is whatever the agent is working with at that step: your message, the conversation so far, and any file contents, command output or web pages the agent has read into it.
The gateway also keeps a record of each model request and its response, filed by organization, user and session, in encrypted cloud storage. Authorization headers, API keys, tokens, passwords and other secrets are stripped out before a record is written.
Under the privacy policy, these records exist for service security and misuse investigation. They're kept for no more than 180 days and then deleted, unless a legal obligation requires keeping specific records longer. Only authorized security staff can open them, and only for a misuse investigation, a security incident or a legal requirement. Customer content stays out of model training. Teams with sensitive workloads can contract an opt-out from this retention before sending covered work; email dev@iaconautonomics.com.
- Keep secrets out of what agents read. A
.envfile an agent opens becomes part of the next model call. Store credentials in your keychain or a secrets manager, and point agents at an integration instead. - Pick providers with your data rules in mind. Each provider applies its own retention and training terms to the requests it receives. Check them for regulated or confidential work.
Where credentials live
| Credential | Kept |
|---|---|
| Your ArkenOS sign-in | In cognito-session.bin in the app's data folder, encrypted with a key held by your system's credential store (the macOS keychain on a Mac). |
| Model API keys and plan sign-ins | With your account's model service. Each one is encrypted with its own data key (AES-256-GCM, with the data key protected by AWS KMS) and tied to your user and that provider. ArkenOS never shows a saved key again. |
| Organization models | Shared keys an admin adds are encrypted, and stay hidden from everyone after saving. |
| Integration tokens, keys, headers and environment values | In your system's credential store. If the store is unavailable, ArkenOS stops and reports an error; secrets are only ever written to the store. |
| Web search keys | In agent/web-search.json, a file only your user account can read. |
Web access
Agents search and fetch pages through their own web tools, separate from your browser. They never use your browser's cookies or signed-in sessions, and hosted page-fetching services stay off. Pages are fetched from your computer. To keep a workspace offline, turn off Web access in its workspace features. See Web access.
Integrations
Integrations connect from your computer straight to each tool. Local ones (arXiv, MLflow, Zotero and others) run as programs on your machine. Agents can do whatever the token you give them allows, so prefer read-only tokens and widen access only for the task that needs it. Integrations are set up per computer. See Integrations.
Who can see what
Your workspace folder and chats are on your computer. Teammates see them only if you share the folder (for example, by committing it to git) or post in a shared space.
| Role | Sees and manages |
|---|---|
| Owner | Everything below, plus billing changes and ownership |
| Admin | Members, roles, teams, organization details and shared models; can view usage and billing |
| Billing admin | Billing and usage; can view members and teams |
| Member | Their own work; can view members and teams |
The Usage page shows owners, admins and billing admins each member's request, token and credit counts for the billing period. See Members and teams.
Signing out and removing data
- Sign out deletes your saved sign-in from this computer and revokes it with the sign-in service.
- Disconnect a model provider on its card in Settings → Models, or use Disconnect all, to delete its saved credential from your account's model service.
- Remove an integration from its menu in Settings → Integrations to delete it and its secrets from this computer.
- Delete the app's data folder to remove chats, channels, issues, automations and settings from this computer. Your workspace folders stay where they are.
- Remove a member in Members & teams to take away their access to the organization.
To delete your account or organization data held in the cloud, email dev@iaconautonomics.com.