Local AI
Routines runs a local-first AI assistant for normal people. Your notes, meetings, and memory stay on your Mac as plain markdown and SQLite. Run a local LLM, bring your own key, or use the AI included with your account. Your notes, meetings and memory stay on disk unless you turn on Cloud Sync and Backup or share one by link. The model call travels, and so does meeting and dictation audio when you record or dictate. The page below says exactly where.
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Most "private" cloud apps just promise not to look. Routines keeps your notes, meetings, and memory on your Mac as plain markdown and SQLite, so privacy is the default shape of the app, not a setting you hope someone honored.
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Point Routines at a local model, bring an Anthropic API key, sign in with your ChatGPT or Claude subscription, or use the AI included with your account. A local model never leaves the Mac. Your own key lives in the macOS Keychain and the request goes out from your machine, never through us. Routines AI passes the request through our server to Anthropic and stores no part of it.
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Your assistant remembers context across days because that memory is markdown files on disk. Open them, edit them, back them up, delete them. No hidden vector store you cannot see.
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Reading your routines, outputs, meetings, and memory hits your local database and works with the network off. The model call leaves your machine, going to the provider you chose, and so does meeting and dictation audio, which goes to Deepgram for transcription.
Cloud AI vs local AI
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FAQ
Local AI means the app and your data run on your own computer instead of a company server. Routines stores everything on your Mac as markdown and SQLite, and only sends a request to a model provider when you actually ask the AI to do something.
Routines can read your routines, meetings, memory, and outputs fully offline because they live in a local database. The text-generation step needs a model, and that step needs a connection: point it at a local model you run yourself, or, when you are online, let Routines AI handle it or use a cloud provider on your own key.
We never see your key: it lives in the macOS Keychain and is never sent to us. Your notes and memory stay on your Mac unless you switch on Cloud Sync and Backup, which is off by default, or share one by link. With it off, the prompt travels, in one of two shapes, and so does meeting and dictation audio when you record or dictate, which goes to Deepgram for transcription. On your own key or a local model, the request goes from your machine to the provider and there is no Routines server in the middle. On Routines AI, the request passes through our server to Anthropic and we store nothing of it, only the tokens and cost we bill.
A privacy toggle asks you to trust a promise about data the vendor is already holding. Routines starts out holding none of it: your notes, memory and history are files on your disk, and by default a single prompt moves, either through a server that stores nothing or straight to the provider on your own key, and so does meeting and dictation audio when you record or dictate, which goes to Deepgram for transcription. Cloud Sync and Backup changes that, and it is off until you turn it on yourself. So does sharing a meeting or an output by link.
Local-first by design. AI included, or run a local model or your own key. Free for 7 days.
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