How Processing Works

How a request is handled

1. You write a message or start a web search, or approve a search the assistant suggests. Until you do, everything stays on your device.
2. Stewards assembles only what is needed: your message, the current conversation, and any Matter context you included. For a request made from the discovery drafter — drafting a set, suggesting topics, or drafting responses — that is your instructions plus, below Local-Only, the party you represent, your included notes, and file excerpts. Untrusted material — file excerpts, an incoming discovery set, and web content — is clearly labeled as source material so the AI treats it as evidence, not instructions.
3. That bundle is sent transiently to the Stewards Gateway, which relays it to Tinfoil, the confidential-inference provider whose enclave runs the model, adding an access key held on the server. The bundle is sent only after the enclave hardware, encryption key, and signed software build verify for that request; it is encrypted on your device to that enclave, and the gateway forwards ciphertext it cannot read; Tinfoil's staff cannot open it either, because the hardware keeps the enclave's memory sealed from the machine's operator and the build inside is one Tinfoil signed into a public transparency log. The model is an open-weight model chosen by Stewards; Settings › Security & Privacy › Protections names the one in use. The gateway does not store your prompts or the responses.
4. For web research, the AI writes a query — when you start a search, or in its reply when it suggests one — through the same private gateway as chat, never the search engine. On this device Stewards then removes your glossary terms, the party you represent, and structured identifiers — contact details, dates, ID, account and docket numbers, and addresses — unless a Standard Matter has turned that off, flags the other names it detects, and shows you what it removed and flagged. The query you then approve, or the address of a page you choose to read, is sealed on your device to Tinfoil's search enclave after the same checks as the AI's enclave, and the gateway relays it unread; inside, Tinfoil's search service runs it on Exa, a search engine, which never receives your notes, files, messages, or network address. Results and page text come back sealed, labeled as untrusted source material.
5. The response streams back and is saved, encrypted, on your device.

You can see a record of everything that left the device under Settings › Data Activity.