A plain-English and technical breakdown of how PrivateDocs AI keeps document ingestion, vector search, and LLM inference entirely on your hardware — and how to verify it.
These aren't marketing claims — each one maps to a concrete component running on your machine.
After license activation and the initial model download, PrivateDocs AI can run on a machine that is fully air-gapped. There is no recurring heartbeat or scheduled license check that interrupts your work.
A pinned, embedded ChromaDB runs in-process. There is no external database service to deploy, no network port to expose, and no off-device replication.
A managed Ollama runtime performs inference on your hardware. The app auto-starts and health-checks the runtime — no Docker, no Python, no terminal required.
Your documents, prompts, and responses are not sent to us, to Supabase, to Stripe, or to any model API for AI processing. Account, licensing, billing, and optional update services remain separate.
Every step below happens on your machine. The only network path is the optional update and license check, which never carries document or chat content.
You install a signed macOS or Windows binary. The UI is local; the model and vector store live in the same process tree.
Files are parsed, OCR'd, and chunked on your machine. Chunks and embeddings are written directly into the local ChromaDB vault.
When you ask a question, the retrieved chunks and your prompt are sent over a local IPC channel to the bundled Ollama runtime — not the internet.
Chat history and citations are written to the same local vault. Exportable, deletable, and never mirrored off-device.
Document content, embeddings, prompts, and model responses never leave your device. There is no API call to a cloud LLM during normal chat or indexing.
Embeddings are stored in a bundled, on-device ChromaDB instance. There is no hosted vector database and no off-site replica.
LLM inference runs through a bundled Ollama runtime on your own CPU/GPU/Apple Silicon. No inference request is sent to any third party.
Your vault folder inherits macOS FileVault or Windows BitLocker. We do not add our own encryption layer that could be bypassed by us.
IT teams can allowlist these endpoints and block everything else. Document and chat content never appears in any of them.
Run any network inspector while you chat with a confidential document. You will see connections only to auth, billing, and (optionally) update endpoints — never to a model API carrying your content.
We don't reinvent the wheel. We bundle the same battle-tested open-source stack you might assemble yourself — signed, pinned, and updated as a single native app.
Managed local inference engine. Pulls Llama 3, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, and more — directly into your local registry.
Embedded, in-process vector store. Your vault is a folder on disk — no external database service, no network port.
PDF, Office, and image ingestion runs entirely on-device. No document is uploaded for parsing or embedding.
Once your license is activated and your initial models are downloaded, the desktop app can run on a machine with the network cable unplugged. Document parsing, OCR, embedding, vector search, LLM inference, and chat persistence all run locally. The app does not require an ongoing connection to function.
Yes. PrivateDocs AI bundles a pinned, embedded ChromaDB instance that runs in the same process tree as the app. Your vault is a folder on disk — there is no hosted vector database, no network port, and no off-site replica. You can back it up, move it, or delete it like any other folder.
Ollama runs as a managed local runtime inside the app. The app starts it, monitors its health, and restarts it if needed. Models are pulled directly into your local Ollama registry from inside the app — you can also bring models you already have. There is no inference call to a third-party model API.
Architecturally, the AI inference path (document chunks, embeddings, prompts, model responses) never connects to PrivateDocs AI, Supabase, Stripe, or any external model API. The only network calls the app makes are for account sign-in, license validation, billing, and optional updates — none of which carry your document or chat content. You can verify this with any network inspector (e.g. Little Snitch, GlassWire, or Wireshark).
Yes. The vault is a regular folder governed by your existing FileVault/BitLocker policy and DLP rules. Network behavior is limited to known auth, billing, and update endpoints that IT can allowlist. There is no shadow infrastructure or shadow API to discover.
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