Privacy & sync

Privacy by architecture

Gearbox Relay stores everything locally on your device. Sync is optional, encrypted, and under your control. We do not have access to your data, your keys, or your patterns. This is not a policy promise. It is a structural fact of the software.

Five privacy guarantees

1. On-device AI — All enrichment runs locally. Zero cloud AI tokens.
2. End-to-end encrypted sync — Sync blobs are encrypted with AES-256-GCM. Keys are derived from your password via Argon2id. The server stores only ciphertext.
3. Opt-in publishing — Nothing is shared unless you explicitly publish a Stream.
4. No third-party data sharing — No advertising, no profiling, no selling.
5. Open source verification — The core client is Apache 2.0. You can build from source and run your own sync server.

We cannot see your stuff. We cannot give anyone access. It's mechanically impossible.

Cross-device sync

Gearbox Relay uses LWW (last-writer-wins) object sync rather than CRDTs. This is a single-user, multi-device protocol — designed for you to sync your own data across your own devices. Conflict resolution: higher last_modified timestamp wins.

The sync protocol runs through relay-core and is identical on desktop and mobile.

Telemetry

Opt-in crash and performance telemetry (Sentry) is disabled by default. It is PII-scrubbed when enabled. You control this from the Settings panel.