Privacy policy
Updated October 9, 2026
This policy explains what data Kvelo receives about you, why, who we share it with, how long we keep it and how you can control it. It applies from October 9, 2026 and replaces the previous version.
In short
- Your conversations with the assistant stay on your Mac. The app sends them straight to your own AI provider, OpenAI or Anthropic, under your subscription, and they never reach us.
- Files from your Kvelo folder reach us only inside an encrypted backup. We open it only if you ask us to or the law requires it.
- For your account and access we receive your email address, name, questionnaire answers and technical sign-in data.
- We collect usage statistics to improve Kvelo. App statistics never contain the text of your conversations, file names, keys or passwords.
- We do not sell data and do not share it for advertising.
1. Who we are
The controller of your personal data is the developer of the kvelo.dev website and the Kvelo product (“we”).
For any question about your data, write to [email protected].
We process data under the personal data law that applies to us. For people in the European Union, the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, we also comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to the extent it applies to us.
2. Where this policy applies
This policy covers:
- the kvelo.dev website and blog;
- your Kvelo account at app.kvelo.dev: sign-in, the questionnaire, the access and download pages, and the guide for Cursor, Claude Code and Codex;
- the Kvelo app for Mac;
- your Kvelo folder and the Kvelo core inside it, including when you work through Cursor, Claude Code, Codex or the Telegram companion;
- Kvelo downloads, updates and backups at get.kvelo.dev;
- the emails we send and the emails you write to us.
It does not cover the services you use yourself: ChatGPT and other OpenAI services, Claude and other Anthropic services, your Google account, Cursor, Telegram, the hosting of your own server, a connection broker, or any other service you connect to the assistant. Those companies handle data under their own rules.
3. How Kvelo works and where your data lives
Kvelo runs on your Mac. Almost everything you do with the assistant never reaches us.
- Your Kvelo folder lives on your Mac. It holds your files, the assistant’s memory, your profile, rules, and the keys of the services you connected.
- The app’s data is on your Mac too: conversation history, folder snapshots used to undo changes, settings, and your sign-in to your subscription.
- Your AI provider. The assistant runs on your own ChatGPT or Claude subscription. When you write to the assistant, the app sends your message, the files it needs and the folder context straight from your Mac to OpenAI or Anthropic. Web search also goes through your provider. The app opens pages from links itself, from your Mac. Your provider handles this data under its own rules and the terms of your subscription.
- Signing in to your subscription happens on the provider’s website. We never see your password. Access to your subscription is stored on your Mac and is not sent to us.
- The Telegram companion, if you set it up, syncs your folder directly with your own server. You rent that server; we have no access to it.
We only receive data in the cases listed in section 4.
4. What data we receive
Whose data we process: visitors to our websites, people with a Kvelo account, including those on the waitlist, people who have been invited, users of the app and the Kvelo folder, and people who write to us.
4.1 Account
- Your email address.
- Your name. When you sign in with Google, it comes from Google, and you can correct it in the questionnaire.
- When you sign in with Google, also your profile picture and your Google account ID. See section 13.
- Your Kvelo account number and the date it was created.
- Sign-in data. The code from the email is stored only as a hash and works for 10 minutes. For each session we keep the time, IP address and a description of the browser or device.
4.2 Questionnaire
Your preferred language, name, how you heard about Kvelo, what you do for work, and whether you have a ChatGPT or Claude subscription. Only the language is required. If you chose “Other”, you can say it in your own words. If you asked us to tell you when Kvelo for Windows or for Intel Macs comes out, we keep that choice.
Together with the questionnaire, as with a request on the website, we receive your country based on your IP address, where you came from and UTM tags, the first page of your visit, your browser language and description, screen width, time zone, and your visitor IDs in Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics. This goes into our registration notice and our CRM and is not stored in your account; the visitor IDs are also linked to your analytics profile so we can see the path from an ad to the first message.
4.3 Access
Your access status: granted, waitlisted or closed. The Kvelo access key and subscriber number linked to your account. How and when access was granted and its plan. For invitations: the email address, language, expiry, and when and by which account the invitation was accepted. We keep the invitation link only as a hash.
4.4 Emails
We send sign-in codes, the “Kvelo is ready for you” email, invitations and download links. Our email provider receives the address, subject and body of each email.
When you write to us, we receive your message and anything you attach. For example, the summary from “Report a problem”, which contains the Kvelo and macOS versions, the model and the codes of recent failures. The assistant puts the summary together and you see it before sending.
4.5 Request form on the site
If you submitted a request on kvelo.dev: your name, email address and, if you chose to give them, your phone number and Telegram username. Along with the request we receive the country derived from your IP address, where you came from and UTM tags, your browser language and description, and your visitor ID in analytics.
4.6 Website analytics
On kvelo.dev and app.kvelo.dev we receive: your IP address and the approximate location derived from it, your device, browser and operating system, where you came from and UTM tags, which pages you opened, clicks, scrolling, and cookie identifiers. PostHog may record what happens on a page as a video. Input fields are hidden in recordings, and the sign-in, questionnaire, account and download pages are never recorded.
If you signed in, website events are linked to your account number, and your analytics profile gets your email address and questionnaire answers. This lets us see one person’s path from the first visit to the first message to the assistant.
The account server records two events under your account number: that the account was created and how, and that access was granted and how.
4.7 App analytics
The app sends:
- a random install number it creates on first launch, and after you sign in, your account number;
- the Kvelo and macOS versions and the processor type;
- events from a closed list: app opened, conversation started, files changed (only the action and the count), search used, settings opened, subscription connected or disconnected and which one, model or thinking depth changed, the result of an access key check, sign-in, sign-out and access status, first-launch steps and how long the first launch took, folder install, update and sync and their result, how many files and images were sent, changes undone or redone, notification opened, the kind of a failure, and how many seconds passed from first launch to your first message;
- error reports: the type and code of the error and where in the app’s own code it happened.
The text of conversations and messages, file names and contents, paths, conversation titles, keys, passwords and tokens never go into statistics. Location is not derived from the IP address for app events.
If you signed in with Google, the app loads your profile picture from Google’s servers to show it in your profile.
4.8 Key, downloads and updates
When the app or the assistant checks your key or downloads Kvelo, the core or an update, our server receives the key and your IP address. Only a hash of the key stays in our logs. To prevent brute-force attempts, we count requests by a hash of the IP address.
4.9 Backups
Once a day, while you work with the assistant, it uploads an encrypted copy of your Kvelo folder to our cloud storage. The copy contains the whole folder: files, memory, profile, and the service keys in the secrets folder. It is encrypted on your Mac before upload.
The encryption key is derived from your access key, which we also hold. So we are technically able to decrypt the copy. We do so only at your request, to restore your folder, or where the law requires it. The 7 most recent copies are kept.
4.10 Security
To protect sign-in from bots and code guessing, we check the browser with Cloudflare Turnstile when you request a code, and we count requests. Email counters are stored as hashes of the mailbox and network, not the addresses themselves. For rate limiting, we process the IP address. Our hosting provider keeps technical request logs.
4.11 What we do not collect
We do not ask for information about your health, political opinions, religion or other special categories of data, and we do not collect biometrics. Please do not put them into the questionnaire or emails unless you need to. What goes into your folder is up to you. We do not look inside backups.
We hold no payment data: Kvelo has no payments at the moment.
5. Why we use data and on what legal basis
| Purpose | Data | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|
| Create your account, sign you in on the site and in the app, keep you signed in | account, sign-in data | contract |
| Grant access, run the waitlist, send invitations and service emails | email, name, language, access, invitations | contract |
| Speak to you in your language, show who is signed in, tailor Kvelo to your work | language, name, picture, questionnaire | contract |
| Let you download Kvelo, check your key, install and update the core | key, IP address, versions | contract |
| Keep backups and restore your folder | folder copy, subscriber number | contract |
| Answer your emails and investigate failures | correspondence, problem summary | contract, legitimate interests |
| Handle requests and registrations, understand who comes to us and from where | request, email, name, questionnaire, account number | contract, legitimate interests |
| Improve Kvelo: understand how it is used, where people get stuck and what breaks, test new ideas | account and app events, error reports | legitimate interests |
| The same on our websites, and linking statistics to your account, email and questionnaire answers | website analytics, recordings, analytics profile | consent |
| Tell you about important changes to Kvelo, ask for feedback, invite you to a short interview | email, name, language | legitimate interests |
| Protect Kvelo from bots, code guessing and abuse | IP address, browser data, counters, logs | legitimate interests |
| Produce overall statistics not linked to individuals, including for publications | anonymised data | legitimate interests, with anonymisation |
| Comply with the law and defend our rights | whatever a specific case requires | legal obligation, legitimate interests |
What the legal bases mean:
- Contract. The processing is needed to perform the Terms of use or, at your request, to take steps before that, such as putting you on the waitlist. Article 6(1)(b) GDPR.
- Consent. You give it when you keep using the site after the notice, see section 9. You can withdraw your consent at any time, see section 10. Article 6(1)(a) GDPR.
- Legitimate interests. Our interest in developing and protecting Kvelo, where it does not override your rights and freedoms. Article 6(1)(f) GDPR. You can object to this processing, see section 10.
- Legal obligation. The processing is needed to comply with the law. Article 6(1)(c) GDPR.
Where the law that applies to us sets other bases, such as processing for statistical purposes with mandatory anonymisation, we rely on them in the same way.
You cannot create an account without an email address, and Kvelo does not work without an access key. The questionnaire answers, except the language, are optional.
We do not make decisions that produce legal effects for you based solely on automated processing.
We do not send marketing emails. If we decide to, we will ask for your consent separately. Service emails and emails about important changes to Kvelo go to everyone with an account. You can opt out of feedback requests by replying to any of them.
We collect, record, organise, store, update, retrieve, use, disclose, anonymise, restrict, erase and destroy data, by automated means and otherwise, only for the purposes in this section.
6. Who we share data with
We use services that process data on our behalf and only for our purposes. Each receives only what it needs to do its job and must keep the data confidential and secure.
| Who | What they do | What data they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare, Inc. | hosting of the websites, the account and downloads, the account database, storage for downloads and backups, bot protection, DNS | account, questionnaire and access data, backups, IP addresses, request logs |
| Resend (Plus Five Five, Inc.) | sends our emails | email address, subject and body |
| Zoho Mail | the [email protected] mailbox | your emails to us; notices of new registrations with the email address, name, questionnaire answers and account number |
| PostHog, Inc. | analytics for the websites, the account and the app, recordings on the websites, app error reports | events, install and account numbers, IP address; email address and questionnaire answers in the profile if you signed in |
| Attio Ltd | managing requests and registrations | name, email address, language, questionnaire answers, account number; for a request from the site, also phone, Telegram username, where you came from and browser data |
| Google LLC | sign-in with Google; Google Analytics on kvelo.dev; fonts on kvelo.dev | for sign-in, Google sees that you are signing in to Kvelo and gives us your name, email address, picture and account ID; for analytics, visit data and cookies; for fonts, IP address and browser data |
| Yandex LLC | statistics and click maps for kvelo.dev in Yandex Metrica | visit data, IP address, cookies |
| Anthropic, PBC and Apple Inc. | our team’s working tools: the Claude AI assistant we use to grant access, and iCloud storage for working documents | the email addresses and questionnaire answers of people we grant access to |
Your own services. OpenAI and Anthropic as the providers of your subscription, Cursor, Telegram, the hosting of your server, a connection broker, a voice transcription service and any other service you connect to the assistant receive data from you and from the app on your Mac, not from us. They are not our processors and work under their own rules.
We disclose data where the law requires it, for example at the request of a court or public authority. If the Kvelo business is transferred to another party, the data is transferred to it together with the obligation to follow this policy.
7. International transfers
Some of the recipients in section 6 are located outside your country and outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Data is transferred to them to perform our contract with you and to run the services we need.
- Cross-border transfers are carried out in the manner required by the personal data law that applies to us.
- Under the GDPR, transfers rely on an adequacy decision of the European Commission, including the Data Privacy Framework for certified US companies, or on the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses. You can request a copy of these safeguards at [email protected].
8. Retention
Personal data is kept for the lifetime of the account. Data on the use of Kvelo is kept in de-identified form for the lifetime of the account. Data received without an account is kept for as long as necessary for the purposes in section 5.
The seven most recent backups of the Kvelo folder are kept.
Retention of data in the services listed in section 6 is governed by the rules of those services.
When the retention period ends or upon a request for erasure, data is deleted or de-identified, except data that the law requires us to keep or that is necessary to protect our rights.
9. Cookies and similar technologies
A cookie is a small file a website stores in your browser. Local storage and session storage work in a similar way.
Necessary cookies always work, because sign-in and protection depend on them. Analytics cookies also turn on right away. On kvelo.dev the cookie notice tells you about them, and the sign-in page at app.kvelo.dev links to this policy. By continuing to use the site, you agree to analytics. To opt out, block or delete the sites’ cookies in your browser settings, or write to us, see section 10.
| What | Where | Why | How long |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account session | app.kvelo.dev | keeps you signed in | 30 days, renewed while you keep signing in |
| Sign-in with Google and the return to Kvelo | app.kvelo.dev | secure sign-in | a few minutes |
| Access to the guide for Cursor, Claude Code and Codex | app.kvelo.dev | opens the guide; one of these cookies contains your access key and cannot be read by page scripts | 30 days |
| Cookie notice | kvelo.dev | remembers that you closed it | 1 year |
| Session storage | app.kvelo.dev | remembers sign-in steps while the tab is open | until the tab is closed |
| Local storage | app.kvelo.dev | remembers whether the side panel is collapsed and your place in the guide | until you clear it |
| Cloudflare Turnstile | kvelo.dev, app.kvelo.dev | tells people from bots | for the duration of the check |
| PostHog | kvelo.dev, app.kvelo.dev | statistics and recordings | up to 1 year |
| Google Analytics | kvelo.dev | visit statistics | up to 2 years |
| Yandex Metrica | kvelo.dev | visit statistics and click maps | up to 1 year |
The Kvelo app for Mac does not use cookies. It keeps the install number, sign-in data and settings in its own files on your Mac.
10. Your rights
You can:
- find out what data of yours we process, why, where it came from and who we share it with, and get a copy;
- correct inaccurate data;
- erase your data or your whole account;
- restrict processing or ask us to stop it;
- object to processing based on legitimate interests, including app analytics and feedback requests;
- receive the data you gave us in a machine-readable format and have it transmitted to another service;
- withdraw your consent, which does not affect the lawfulness of processing before the withdrawal;
- lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority or go to court. If you are in the EU, the EEA or the UK, this includes the data protection authority of your country.
How: send a request to [email protected] from your account’s email address. If the request comes from another address, we may ask you to confirm that the account is yours. We respond within the time limits set by law.
Deleting your account. Upon a request for erasure, we delete your account and the personal data associated with it and revoke your access key within the time limits set by law, except data that the law requires us to keep or that is necessary to protect our rights. Your Kvelo folder and the app’s data on your Mac stay with you. Once the key is revoked, core updates and backups stop.
Opting out of analytics. You can withdraw your consent to website analytics or object to account and app analytics by sending a request to [email protected]. On the websites, you can also block or delete cookies in your browser settings.
11. How we protect data
- All connections to our websites and servers use HTTPS.
- Sign-in codes, invitation links and email counters are stored only as hashes.
- The code that returns you from the browser to the app works for one minute and only for the app that started the sign-in.
- The app never shows the access key in full, only its last 4 characters. The app does not pass keys, sessions or tokens to its window, logs, analytics or conversations with the assistant.
- The account session in the app is stored in a file that only your macOS user account can read. The assistant’s tools cannot access it.
- Backups are encrypted on your Mac before upload.
- Sign-in is protected from bots and code guessing: rate limits, the Turnstile check, single-use codes with a short lifetime.
- Error reports are cleaned: only the type and code of the error and the places in the app’s code remain.
- Only people who need data for their work have access to it.
No method of transmitting or storing data is completely secure. We notify supervisory authorities and you of personal data incidents in the cases and within the time limits set by law.
12. Children
Kvelo is for adults: you must be at least 18 to use it. We do not knowingly collect data from children. If we learn that an account was created by a person under 18, we may delete that account. If you are a parent and think your child gave us data, write to [email protected].
13. Data from Google
If you sign in with Google, we ask Google only for your basic profile: name, email address, picture and Google account ID. We get no access to your email, files, calendar or any other Google data.
- We use data from Google only to sign you in and to show who is signed in.
- We use the tokens Google issues at sign-in only to get your profile, and we do not store them. We do not request a long-lived token for access without you.
- We do not sell data from Google, do not use it for advertising and do not share it with anyone except the processors in section 6 and where the law requires.
- Kvelo’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
- You can disconnect Kvelo from your Google account in your Google account settings, under third-party apps and services.
14. Changes to this policy
We may change this policy. A new version takes effect when it is published on this page, unless it states otherwise. We notify you of material changes by email or in the app. Where a new purpose of processing requires consent, we ask for it.
15. Contact
The developer of kvelo.dev.
Email: [email protected].