Privacy

What It Reads

Samskara reads the apps on your Mac where they keep their data. Messages, Notes, Mail, Calendar, call history, Maps, Screen Time, Voice Memos, and browser history from Safari, Chrome, Brave, Edge, Arc and Firefox need Full Disk Access. Contacts and Photos each ask for their own macOS permission. It also reads the exports you drop in, such as a Google Takeout, an Instagram download or Apple's Health export. A takeout zip is read where it sits.

Samskara only reads. Nothing in Messages, Notes, Photos or your other apps changes, and a connected Gmail mailbox is opened read only.

Where It Keeps It

Everything Samskara builds goes in the archive folder, ~/Samskara unless you chose another during setup (~/.samskara if you set up before 0.1.8). It holds one SQLite database with its search indexes, a small copy of each photo and video, the search models, the logs, the exports you moved in, and a log of what each AI app was given. That log names each item by where it is in the archive and holds none of its text. Settings for this Mac are in ~/Library/Application Support/Samskara.

The archive is not encrypted. Any program that runs as you on this Mac can open the database file, and so can anyone who signs in as you. FileVault, if it is on, encrypts the whole disk while the Mac is off. A backup you make of the folder carries the archive as it is.

Work Done on Your Mac

Samskara embeds the archive on your Mac, including what it holds about other people. The download includes nomic-embed-text, a text model, for word search and search by meaning on text. EmbeddingGemma 2, which you can download during setup, also covers photos, video frames, PDF pages and voice memos, and it runs on your Mac too. Version 0.1.4 has only nomic-embed-text.

Photo captions and drafted replies can use Ollama when it is already on this Mac. A model running on this Mac stays here.

What Leaves Your Mac

This is the whole list. Samskara sends no analytics or crash reports and does not check for updates. Its own web server listens only on this Mac.

• An AI app you connect. When Claude, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or another app that uses MCP asks through the MCP server, the panel shows the items. Only what you approve, or allow for 30 days, goes to that app. A photo goes as the picture the panel drew, with your redactions painted in and no place or camera data in the file. Its time, place, coordinates and camera go as text only if you leave them ticked, and coordinates and camera start unticked. A PDF goes as its drawn pages, a file as the bytes you saw, and a sound clip whole. The app usually sends what it gets to its company's servers, under that company's terms. The panel shows the name the app gives itself, and Samskara does not check the program behind that name. On 0.1.4 there is no panel, so a connected app receives whatever its tool calls return.
• iCloud Photos. When your Mac keeps only a preview of a photo or video, Photos downloads it from iCloud when Samskara makes its small copy, or when you or an approved tool opens the original. Apple sees the request. Nothing is uploaded.
• Gmail, if you connect it. Samskara signs in to Google's mail server with the app password you give it and fetches mail read only. The password is kept in your Keychain as Samskara Gmail.
• Snapchat memories, if your export holds links. When a Snapchat export lists a memory as a link instead of the file, each refresh fetches it from Snapchat, which sees the request. Samskara fetches only from Snapchat's own addresses.
• YouTube thumbnails, if you turn them on. The switch in Settings is off by default. When it is on, Samskara fetches a video's thumbnail from YouTube's image server by the video's id, with no cookies.
• EmbeddingGemma 2, when you choose it. When you choose All at Once or Over Time in setup, the app downloads EmbeddingGemma 2, about 865 MB, from huggingface.co. Hugging Face sees the request, and nothing is uploaded. Word Search Only downloads nothing, and nomic-embed-text ships inside the app.
• Ollama, when it is already on this Mac. A model pulled through Ollama comes from ollama.com. A caption or a drafted reply that uses an Ollama cloud model, or an Ollama address on another machine, sends that prompt there.
• Links that open in your browser. Help and Releases in the app open samskara.me. The Add Data steps open each service's export page, such as Google Takeout, Apple's privacy site or Snapchat's account page. A web link you click inside the archive, such as a profile in an Instagram export, opens in the browser too. Your browser makes these requests only when you click.

Samskara also has a door for an agent on another device. It is off by default and listens only on this Mac, so it needs a tunnel you set up yourself.

Limits

The panel holds for a model that reaches the archive through the MCP tools. It does not stop a program that opens the database file directly, an app that reports another app's name, or what a company does with the items you approved. Removing Samskara does not reach those items either.

What This Website Records

• Every download button goes through /api/dl, which writes one line before it sends your browser to the build: the user agent your browser sends, and the time. It sets no cookie and keeps no id that follows you between visits.

That line goes to the function log of Vercel, which hosts this site. Vercel also keeps its own request logs for every page, under its own terms. The host that holds the build file sees the download request.

The site is run by Samskara. Its host, Vercel, keeps function log lines for one hour and then deletes them, so nothing recorded about you is kept past that hour.

Remove Everything

Quit Samskara, then delete each of these.

• The archive folder, ~/Samskara, ~/.samskara from before 0.1.8, or the folder you chose, with the database, photo copies, models, logs, the exports you moved in, and the log of what AI apps were given.
• Any part you moved elsewhere, such as a Library or small copies on another drive.
• This Mac's Samskara folder, ~/Library/Application Support/Samskara, with the settings, what you allowed each app, and the folder you chose.
• App preferences, ~/Library/Preferences/com.samskara.samskara.plist.
• The app's web caches, ~/Library/Caches/com.samskara.samskara and ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.samskara.samskara, which macOS keeps for the app's window.
• Any archive export, a samskara-export-<date> folder that Export Archive on Sources writes to your Desktop unless you chose another place. It is a full copy of the archive.
• The login item, in System Settings, General, Login Items, if you turned on Launch at Login.
• Each AI app's connection. Press Disconnect in Settings before you remove the app, or delete the samskara entry from that app's MCP settings.
• The Keychain item named Samskara Gmail, in Keychain Access, if you connected Gmail.
• Background jobs, only if you installed from a copy of the source. Run its Messages watcher and nightly refresh scripts again with --uninstall.
• The permissions, in System Settings, Privacy and Security: turn Samskara off under Full Disk Access, Contacts and Photos.
• The app, from Applications.

Your originals and exports stay where you keep them. Removing Samskara does not reach what an AI app already received, or the copies your backups keep.

Licenses

Licenses lists what this site serves. The app carries its own notices file.