Privacy

The only thing Start sends to us is a small set of product usage events. We do not collect your code, prompts, chat messages, file contents, file paths, diffs, environment variables, project or task names, or the responses from any AI provider.

Events are tied to a random identifier generated on first launch and kept locally on your machine. We also read your global git user.name at launch and attach it to the identifier so we can recognize you across reinstalls and machines. We do not read or send your git email, and there is no account system.

The events we record are coarse product signals: turning autopilot on or off, creating a task, creating a scheduled job, approving a plan, committing a change, creating or merging a pull request, a session starting, and a project finishing its initial index. Only the fact that the action occurred is recorded, never its content.

Alongside these events we record the operating system platform and the version of Start you are running.

Events are processed by PostHog, our analytics provider, under their privacy policy in addition to this one.

All application data is stored locally on your Mac. Projects, chat history, tasks, preferences, indexes, and logs reside in the application's data directory on your device. You can open, back up, move, or delete this directory at any time.

No server-side copy exists. There is nothing for us to synchronize and nothing for us to disclose.

API keys and access tokens are stored securely in the macOS Keychain. They are never transmitted to our servers and we cannot read them. Start uses the tokens present on your machine when it needs to call an AI provider or a connected service.

If you rotate or revoke a key with the provider, Start will be unable to use it until the corresponding Keychain entry is updated.

When you send a prompt, it goes directly from your Mac to the AI provider you have configured, using your own credentials. The provider sees that data because it is the one answering the request, and its handling is governed by its own policies. Start does not copy or store any of it.

The same applies to any other service you connect, such as a Git host. Requests go from your machine to the service directly.

The only traffic that flows from Start to us is the anonymous analytics events described above and the update check described below.

If you connect Start to external services such as a Git host, a calendar, or a mail account, you authorize Start to communicate with them on your behalf using tokens stored in your Keychain. Those services operate under their own privacy policies, and the data you exchange with them is governed by those policies.

Start does not transmit crash reports or diagnostic logs to us. If you wish to share information about an issue, you may copy the relevant logs from your machine and send them to us directly. Nothing is transmitted unless you choose to send it.

Start checks for new versions so you can stay current. Update checks do not carry identifying information beyond what is required to fetch the release.

To remove everything Start has stored locally, quit the application, then delete its data directory and any entries it created in your Keychain. Uninstalling the application by itself does not clear your data. This is intentional, so that an accidental removal does not destroy your history.

Clearing local data resets the random analytics identifier. The git user.name link is recomputed from your global git config on the next launch, so to fully sever the connection you would also need to change your git identity.

For questions about this policy, contact us at start [at] intelligence [dot] one.