Privacy: your data stays on your machine

Your tool output, the search index and the session log stay in ~/.context-mode on your machine. The network comes in at four clear points, and you can delete any session, source or project at once with ctx_purge.

Free · Local · Private · Yours to keep

Context Mode Engine is source-available under the Elastic License 2.0. Use it, copy it, change it and share it at zero cost, for as long as you follow the licence terms. It runs on your machine, sends zero usage data, and keeps your data in ~/.context-mode.

The question: where does my code go?

A plugin in your agent sees your test logs, your files and your web pages. Before you install one, you want a clear answer. Where does that data live? What goes over the network? How do you delete it?

Where your data lives

Context Mode Engine keeps one database for each project:

~/.context-mode/projects/<key>/context.db

The key comes from the path of your git repo, so all worktrees of one repo share one database. The file sits in your home folder, outside your repo, so it stays out of your commits. It holds:

• the tool output the Engine kept out of the context,
• the search index over that output,
• the session log: your prompts, edits, commands and tool errors.

The same folder also holds backups/, reports/ from doctor, and hook-errors.log. Search runs on SQLite FTS5 and your own runtimes, all on your machine.

What uses the network

The network comes in at four points:

• Install and update. Your agent's own install command, or npm and git, fetch the package.
• Version check. Doctor runs git ls-remote https://github.com/mksglu/context-mode.git release to see if a new version is out. It waits 10 s at most. Offline, the check prints unknown for the version, and the other checks go on.
• URLs you ask for. ctx_index fetches a URL when your agent asks for it. It blocks private and link-local addresses, and it checks again at each redirect.
• Code your agent runs. Code from ctx_execute runs as your user, with your network, like any command in your shell.

Doctor and the debug report remove secrets by their structure before they print.

How long data stays

The Engine cleans up old data by itself. Cleanup runs while every agent has the project closed.

• An indexed item goes after 30 days with zero reads.
• Each project keeps at most 500 MB of indexed output. Above that, the oldest items go first.
• A whole project goes after 14 days closed in every agent.

The session log stays until you purge it. The project you have open stays in place.

Delete data now with ctx_purge

Ask your agent to call ctx_purge. Each call takes exactly one scope: a session, a source or the whole project. It deletes for good, in one write, on this project's database only.

ctx_purge({ session: "<session id>" })      # the session log of one session
ctx_purge({ source: "nested/notes.md" })     # one indexed source
ctx_purge({ project: true })                 # all events, chunks and sources of this project

To clear a project by hand, delete its folder under ~/.context-mode/projects/.

What you get

You know where every byte lives: in one file per project, in your home folder. You know the four points where the network comes in. You decide how long data stays, and one tool call deletes it.