Your data

Manwe gets more useful the more it knows about you, which means it ends up holding things that matter. This page covers where that lives, what leaves your Mac and when, and how to make sure you never lose it.

Where it lives

On your Mac. Your conversations, memory, worlds, advisors, decisions, saved work, Spaces, the pages you've shared, and the documents you've attached are kept in Manwe's own folder on this Mac, along with any models and tools you've downloaded. There's no Manwe account to sign in to, and your record isn't copied to a Manwe server.

Secrets are kept apart. API keys, sign-ins for Notion, Linear and Slack, your Telegram bot's token and your Cloudflare tunnel token are stored in your Mac's Keychain, not alongside the rest. Settings that apps on your Mac use, like keys in Claude Code's configuration, are read from there when needed and never copied into Manwe.

What Manwe learns about how you work stays here too: the corrections and choices it learns from, and the small models it trains on them, are kept in Manwe's database on this Mac and included in your backups. They are never sent to a model provider. The preferences learned from them become memory, and relevant memory is part of the context sent to the model you choose. Turn learning off or reset it in Settings › Profile › Memory and learning; see Memory.

Manwe keeps its own conversation history. Its Codex exchanges request temporary provider threads and reconstruct the relevant Manwe history for later replies; they do not reuse a saved Codex thread ID. Existing history in Codex is not deleted.

What leaves your Mac

That depends on what you've set up, and it's worth knowing exactly:

Cloud modelsWhen you use a model through Claude Code, Codex, or an API key, the provider receives what the model needs to answer: your question, the profile and memory relevant to it, sources Manwe found, document text and supported images supplied for the task. Each participating agent uses its assigned connection, so a mixed-provider group may send relevant task context to more than one provider.

ResearchWhen a question needs current facts, Manwe searches for them, so its search queries go out to the research sources it uses.

Connected servicesNotion, Linear and Slack receive Manwe's searches and reads, and any change you approve.

Apps on this MacRequests go to the app's helper on your Mac. Some helpers reach the internet themselves; their notes in Settings say so.

Apple appsCalendar, Notes, Mail and the rest stay on your Mac, apart from what goes to your model as context. Place searches and travel times go to Apple Maps.

Shared linksPages you share are served from your Mac through Cloudflare to whoever opens the link. Nothing is uploaded to Manwe. See Sharing and Spaces.

TelegramIf you've connected it, your messages and Manwe's answers pass through Telegram on their way between your phone and your Mac.

iCloud DriveOnly if you turn on iCloud backups, below.

Usage analyticsOn by default, and you can turn it off at any time in Settings › Access & approvals › Usage data. Manwe sends TelemetryDeck a small, fixed set of events: the app opening, onboarding finishing, which screen you open, a conversation starting, and whether a task completed, failed or stopped. Each comes with the app and macOS version and a random identifier that isn't linked to you. Never your chats, documents, file paths, names, credentials, memory or model responses. Turning it off stops sending immediately and deletes the random identifier. Like any web request, TelemetryDeck sees your IP address while an event is delivered.

Apple MapsWhen an answer shows a map, Manwe asks Apple Maps to find its places and work out its driving and walking routes. Apple receives the place names and the route start and end points, not your conversation. Apple’s Maps privacy terms apply to those requests.

Voice promptsNothing. When you press the microphone in the composer, Manwe listens until you press it again and turns your speech into text with Apple’s on-device speech recognition. Your voice never leaves this Mac. Pick the language in Settings › General › Voice prompts. The first time, macOS may download Apple’s speech model for that language. If your Mac can’t recognise your language on device, voice prompts stay off rather than using a server.

Downloads and updatesDownloading a model fetches it from Hugging Face. Manwe checks for app updates about twice a day, and while sharing is on, its sharing tool checks for its own updates at most once a day. These requests carry nothing from your record.

With a model running on your Mac, the model itself never sends anything anywhere. See Models and providers. To share Manwe's knowledge with other AI tools on your Mac, see Connecting apps; that's off until you turn it on.

Enabled agent background learning can also use configured providers and public research while Manwe is open and online, without a new message from you. Its daily allowance and pause controls are separate from requested work.

Backups

Manwe's own folder is the kind of place an uninstaller cleans out. So Manwe keeps copies of your record somewhere else, where deleting or reinstalling the app can't reach them. Find them in Settings › Data & backups.

Automatic backups run every 6 hours when something changed, into Documents › Manwe Backups. If nothing changed, no new copy is made.
Back up now makes one whenever you like, for example before a big change. Show in Finder opens the folder.
Documents you attached, the Vault and your saved work are backed up too, not just the database. Spaces and shared pages are included. Temporary tunnel state is excluded; restoring leaves sharing off until you turn it on again.

Manwe thins out old automatic backups so the folder doesn't grow forever. It keeps every backup from the last two days, one a day for a month, and one a month for a year. Backups you made yourself are never thinned, and neither is the newest backup or the one holding the most.

iCloud Drive

Also back up to iCloud Drive puts copies in iCloud Drive › Manwe Backups as well, so they survive losing the Mac. This uploads everything, including all your memory, so turn it on only if you're comfortable with that. It's off by default, and unavailable if iCloud Drive is off on this Mac.

Restoring

Recent backups are listed with their date and what they hold: how many decisions, worlds, and memory items. Choose Restore… on one, and Manwe quits and reopens with that backup in place. Your current database isn't deleted; it's moved to Manwe Backups › Replaced Databases, so you can go back. A run in progress stops. Restoring is postponed while Keep working after quit is on; Manwe tells you to turn it off first. Background tasks come back as saved progress, and you continue them yourself.

A backup stored in iCloud that isn't on this Mac yet shows Download first. And if Manwe ever opens empty, after a reinstall or an accident, it looks for a backup and offers to restore it.

Backups belong to you. They're ordinary files in your Documents folder. Copy them to a drive, or include them in Time Machine, the way you would anything else you can't afford to lose.

Vault

When you attach a document to a question, like a PDF, Word, Excel or PowerPoint file, a CSV, or text, Manwe keeps a copy in the Vault, in Settings › Vault. You can also drop files straight into the Vault. Its Saved work tab keeps the documents, spreadsheets and other outputs Manwe made for you, with their versions. Manwe pulls out the text and splits long documents into sections, so it can find the passage a question needs instead of rereading the whole thing.

Anything in the Vault can be attached again later without finding the file. Removing an item takes it out of the Vault and the attach menus; memory you already approved from it stays.

Privacy, in short

Your record lives on your Mac, with copies where you choose.
Your memory goes to whichever model you use, on this Mac or in the cloud. Cloud providers see it only when you use them.
Proposed facts about you do not become approved personal or World memory without review. Agents keep separate scoped learning records. See Memory.
Other AI tools see your confirmed memory only if you let them read Manwe.
App changes follow the selected approval mode. Approve for me permits requested routine changes; destructive actions require explicit approval in every mode. Mail only prepares drafts.
A shared link opens for anyone who has it, until you turn it off.
Basic usage analytics are on by default and never include your content. Turn them off in Settings › Access & approvals.