Where your words go

Emes Assistant runs on a computer you own. Your appointments, notes, lists and everything it learns about how you work are kept in a file on that machine. There is no account, no server of ours holding your data, and nothing for us to hand over, sell or lose — because we never have it.

Three things do leave your machine, and you should know exactly what they are: the words you say to it go to Anthropic to be understood, your notifications go through a push service to reach your phone, and — if you connect it — your calendar is read from Google. Each is described below.

On your computer, in a database file you can open, copy or delete: appointments and reminders, your daily lists, links you saved to read, rules it has learned about how you like things done, phrasings it has learned from you, a record of notifications it sent, and your settings.

Audio is never stored. When you speak to it, your phone turns that into text and the audio is discarded. The text is used to work out what you meant and is then dropped as well — it is not written down. The one exception is described under “Testing” below, and it is switched off by default.

Anthropic. Every instruction you give it is sent to Anthropic’s Claude API to be turned into something the software understands — “dentist Thursday at 3” into an appointment. This is how it works at all. Anthropic receives the words you say to it. Their handling is governed by their own terms. There is a setting that uses a model running on your own machine instead, and then nothing you say leaves the house.

Push notifications. Reminders reach your phone through a push service (by default the public server at ntfy.sh). The text of a notification passes through that service, which means the title of an appointment can be visible to it — “Dentist at 3 — Dr Weiss”. This is the weakest point in the design and we are not going to pretend otherwise. It can be pointed at a server you run instead, and we are working on making the notifications carry no detail at all.

Google, only if you connect it. If you link a Google account, the assistant reads your calendar so that what is already in your diary shows up alongside what you tell it, and reads your YouTube subscriptions if you use the morning video. Both are read-only: it cannot change or delete anything in your Google account. Nothing is ever written back, and your Google data is not sent anywhere except between your machine and Google.

Links you save. When you save something to read later, your machine fetches that page once to get its title. That website sees a request from your home connection, as it would if you had opened it.

Your phone and your computer. The connection between them runs over a private network (Tailscale) which is encrypted end to end. We do not sit in the middle of it.

If we issued the key that lets your assistant reach Anthropic, we can see how much it was used and what it cost. We cannot see what you said, what is in your calendar, or anything in your lists. Your requests go from your machine to Anthropic directly; they do not pass through us.

If something breaks and you want help, you can send a diagnostic report — you will be shown exactly what it contains before it sends, and it is never taken without you choosing to send it.

The software normally keeps no record of what you say. During a limited testing period we may ask a small number of people to switch that off temporarily, so that we can see the cases where the assistant misunderstood them — the only reliable way to fix it.

If you are asked and you agree, then and only then:

• The words you type or speak, and what the assistant made of them, are saved on your own machine. Never audio.
• It is kept in its own file, separate from everything else, so erasing it removes it completely.
• It has an end date set before it starts. The software deletes it on that date by itself, and refuses to run without one.
• It says so the whole time — on the screen, in red, unmissably.
• You can erase it at any moment from your phone, and change your mind without giving a reason.
• One person reads it, only to fix how the assistant understands people. It is never shared, sold, or used to train anything.

This is off unless you have been asked and said yes. Saying no changes nothing about how the assistant works for you.

Your data is a file on your computer. Uninstalling the software and deleting that file removes everything, permanently, without asking anyone. There is nothing on our side to request the deletion of.

Disconnecting Google can be done from your Google account at any time, and takes effect immediately.

Emes Assistant is not intended for anyone under 16 and we do not knowingly provide it to them.

If this page changes, the date at the top changes with it. If a change affects what leaves your machine, people using it will be told directly rather than left to notice.

Questions, or anything here that does not match what you are seeing: info@leonsurplusdeals.com.