StarNet Privacy
Last reviewed: 2026-07-09, against the shipping code.
StarNet is a local-first desktop app. It runs a small server (the "sidecar") on your own
machine (localhost) and does the agent work there. There is no StarNet cloud, no StarNet
account, and no StarNet server that receives your data. This document is written in plain
English and is grounded in an audit of the actual code — not aspirations.
Support questions: androo.agi@gmail.com.
The short version
- We collect nothing. There is no telemetry, no analytics, no crash reporting, no ad SDK, and no "phone home" of any kind. We verified this by searching the whole codebase for the usual suspects (Sentry, PostHog, Mixpanel, Segment, Google Analytics, Amplitude, Datadog): none are present.
- Your data stays on your machine, under your OS user's app-data directory —
Windows:
%APPDATA%\ai.skynet.harness\workspaces\; macOS:~/Library/Application Support/ai.skynet.harness/workspaces/; Linux:~/.local/share/ai.skynet.harness/workspaces/. (The developer-mode sidecar uses%LOCALAPPDATA%\StarNet\on Windows.) Theai.skynet.harnessfolder name is an intentional back-compatibility alias kept from before the app was renamed to StarNet on 2026-06-22 — it holds your StarNet data. - The app talks to the network only to do work you asked for, and only to the specific third parties described below.
What leaves your machine — and only these
StarNet makes outbound network requests in exactly these situations. Nothing else.
1. Your chosen AI model provider (using your key)
When an agent runs, StarNet calls the model provider you configured, authenticated with your API key (or your ChatGPT sign-in). Your prompts, conversation, and any content the agent works with are sent to that provider so it can generate a response — the same as any app that uses that provider. StarNet is a pass-through here; it does not sit in the middle.
Depending on what you set up, that provider is one of:
- OpenRouter (
openrouter.ai) - OpenAI (
api.openai.com) - Anthropic (
api.anthropic.com) - Google Gemini (
generativelanguage.googleapis.com) - ChatGPT via sign-in (
chatgpt.com/auth.openai.com) - or another OpenAI-compatible provider you point it at (xAI, Groq, Mistral, DeepSeek, Together, Fireworks, Perplexity, Cerebras).
Your key, your data, your account. StarNet never sees a StarNet-owned copy — the key is yours and the request goes straight to the provider you picked.
2. Chat channels — only if you connect them
If you connect a chat channel, StarNet talks to that platform to send and receive messages on the channel you set up, authenticated with the token (or endpoint) you provide. Nothing is contacted unless you connect it:
- Discord / Telegram — StarNet calls that platform's API (
discord.com,api.telegram.org) with your bot token. - Slack — StarNet calls the Slack API (
slack.com) with your bot token. - Matrix — StarNet talks to the homeserver you point it at — whatever URL you configure,
whether
matrix.orgor a server you run yourself — using your access token. StarNet does not pick a server; you do. - Signal — StarNet talks to the signal-cli REST endpoint you run (the URL you configure for your own signal-cli bridge), using the account you registered there.
If you never connect a channel, StarNet never contacts any of these services.
3. Spotify — only if you enable it
If you enable the Spotify integration and authorize it, StarNet calls the Spotify API
(api.spotify.com, accounts.spotify.com) to read what's playing and control playback, using
the token you granted. If you don't enable Spotify, no Spotify requests are made.
4. Web search / web fetch — only when an agent uses that tool
If an agent uses its web tools, StarNet fetches results through independent, keyless services
— web search via Mojeek (mojeek.com, with DuckDuckGo as a fallback) and page reading via
Jina Reader (r.jina.ai) — or, if you have an OpenRouter key, OpenRouter's web plugin. If the
Jina reader is unavailable or rate-limits, the page is fetched directly from its own host
as a fallback, so the site you asked to read may see the request come from your machine. Only
your search query or the URL you asked to read is sent, and only when an agent actually runs a
web search or fetch. (The fetch tool also refuses to reach private/internal network addresses,
as an anti-abuse guard.)
5. Voice / text-to-speech — only if voices are on
Agent voices are synthesized through your model provider (OpenRouter) by default. If you
configure an ElevenLabs voice with your own ElevenLabs key, the line to be spoken is sent
to api.elevenlabs.io instead. No voices, no TTS requests.
6. A version check for updates (no personal data)
The desktop app checks for updates by fetching a single public manifest file from GitHub Releases:
https://github.com/androoAGI/starnet-releases/releases/latest/download/latest.json
This is a plain GET for a static file. No user data, no identifier, and no telemetry are
sent — it's the same request your browser would make to view that file. Each update's
integrity is cryptographically verified against a key baked into the app before anything is
installed.
What StarNet stores on your machine (and how)
Everything below lives under your per-user app-data directory (see the paths in "The short
version" above for Windows/macOS/Linux). It never leaves your machine except as described
above. Where this document says "OS keychain," that means Windows Credential Manager, the
macOS Keychain, or the Linux Secret Service (e.g. GNOME Keyring), depending on your platform —
always under the service name ai.skynet.harness.
| What | Where | How it's stored |
|---|---|---|
| Conversation transcripts | transcript.jsonl |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Run history + cost ledger | runs.jsonl, ledger.jsonl |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Agent memory / beliefs / to-dos | <agent>.notebook.json, <agent>.todo.json, dossier/goals |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Voice cache (spoken-line audio) | voice-cache/ |
Plaintext audio files on disk |
| Discord / Telegram bot tokens | OS keychain (desktop) | OS keychain (Windows Credential Manager); plaintext fallback in bare/dev mode — see below |
| Your model-provider API keys | OS keychain (desktop) | OS keychain (Windows Credential Manager); loaded into app memory at launch, never written to disk by the app |
| Spotify OAuth token | .secrets/spotify.json |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| ChatGPT / Codex sign-in token | codex/tokens.json |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Channel message history (Discord/Telegram chats the bot saw) | channels/*.history.json |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Agent memory ledgers (accepted/declined memory proposals, dossiers, goals) | per-agent *.json |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Station state (widgets, sub-agents, routing, quests, XP) | various *.json |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
| Settings, roster, permissions, cron, connectors | various *.json |
Plaintext JSON on disk |
Secrets: keychain vs. plaintext — the honest picture
On the desktop build, your provider API keys and your Discord/Telegram bot tokens are held
in the OS keychain (Windows Credential Manager, under service ai.skynet.harness), not in
a plaintext file. When you upgrade from an older build, any bot token found in the old
plaintext channels/secrets.json is migrated into the keychain and stripped from that file.
If you instead run the bare sidecar directly (developer mode / node sidecar/index.js /
tests), the OS keychain isn't reachable, so those bot tokens fall back to a plaintext file
(channels/secrets.json). This is called out plainly in the code rather than hidden.
Two secret types are plaintext even on desktop today: the Spotify OAuth token
(.secrets/spotify.json) and the ChatGPT/Codex sign-in token (codex/tokens.json). If
that matters to you, keep those integrations off. (Transcripts are run through a redaction step
at write-time to avoid capturing secret-shaped tokens in your chat history, but the transcript
file itself is plaintext.)
Because this data sits in plaintext files under your user profile, anyone with access to your Windows user account can read it. Protect your machine account accordingly.
What we do NOT do
- We do not run analytics or telemetry of any kind.
- We do not collect crash reports.
- We do not have a StarNet account system or a StarNet backend that stores your data.
- We do not sell, share, or transmit your conversations, keys, or files to anyone — the only outbound traffic is the specific, purpose-built requests listed above.
Deleting your data
Your data is just files. To wipe it, uninstall StarNet and delete the ai.skynet.harness
app-data folder for your OS — Windows: %APPDATA%\ai.skynet.harness\
(C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Roaming\ai.skynet.harness\); macOS:
~/Library/Application Support/ai.skynet.harness/; Linux: ~/.local/share/ai.skynet.harness/.
If you ever ran the developer-mode sidecar on Windows, also delete %LOCALAPPDATA%\StarNet\.
Provider API keys and channel tokens held in the OS keychain can be removed there too (search
your credential manager / keychain for ai.skynet.harness).
This website (starnetos.com)
The website you're reading is a static site with no accounts, no cookies, no analytics, and no tracking scripts. Two things are worth stating plainly:
- It's served through Cloudflare, which — like any host/CDN — processes standard request logs (IP address, user agent) to deliver the pages. We add nothing on top.
- The download page makes one anonymous request to api.github.com from your browser to look up the latest release version and exact installer links. GitHub sees that request the same way it would if you visited the releases page yourself.
The "live preview" on the homepage is the real app running entirely in your browser from a seeded demo save; anything you do in it stays in your browser's local storage and goes nowhere.
Changes
If this changes, we'll update this document. Questions: androo.agi@gmail.com.