Privacy & security

What CodeHerd never does

Store, proxy or transmit your AI provider credentials, API keys or conversations. When you search your sessions, the agents’ own transcripts are read on your Mac at that moment; nothing from them is copied into CodeHerd’s database or sent anywhere.
Send telemetry, analytics or crash reports.
Require an account, or talk to a CodeHerd server except to check for updates (below).
Write terminal output to disk.

What it stores, locally

Your projects, layouts, settings and custom commands, in a SQLite database in ~/Library/Application Support/CodeHerd, plus a diagnostic log in the same folder. Git worktrees you ask for live in ~/.codeherd/worktrees. A Pro licence key you activate is kept in the same database, and when your trial started is also kept in your login keychain.

How the app is locked down

The interface runs in a sandboxed renderer with no access to Node.js, your files or the network.
It talks to the rest of the app through a small, allow-listed set of messages, and every message is checked.
A strict content security policy; no remote content is ever loaded into the app’s own windows. The in-app browser shows web pages in a separate, sandboxed session that can’t reach CodeHerd, and sign-in pages always open in your default browser.
Links only open in your browser, and only to known documentation and install sites.
The Files pane reads a file when you open it and writes it only when you save, and only inside the project's folder or a session's worktree, never through a link that leads elsewhere.
Voice dictation, when you turn it on, transcribes speech on your Mac with whisper.cpp. The microphone is on only while you hold the dictation key, and audio never leaves your Mac. The speech model is downloaded once, when you turn dictation on.
A Pro licence key is activated with Polar, which sells Pro, and checked with it about once a day. Polar receives the key and your Mac's name, nothing else.
Updates: when it opens and once a day, CodeHerd asks downloads.codeherd.app whether there's a new version, sending nothing about you or your Mac, and downloads it in the background. It's installed only if it's signed with CodeHerd's Apple Developer ID and matches the checksum it was published with, and only when you restart or quit CodeHerd. Turn automatic checks off in Settings › About.
The macOS build uses the hardened runtime, Electron's security fuses and Apple notarisation, with the minimum entitlements Electron needs.

Agents have your permissions

An agent running in CodeHerd can do whatever it could do in your terminal: read and edit files in the folders you open and run commands as you. Use each agent's own permission settings, review its changes, and consider worktrees to keep agents apart.

macOS may ask whether CodeHerd can access your Documents, Desktop or other folders. That's macOS asking on behalf of the agents running inside CodeHerd.