How it works
No jargon, no diagram of boxes with arrows. Here is what actually happens on your computer, in the order you would meet it.
Install
A normal desktop application. It checks what your computer can handle and suggests a model that will actually run well on it.
Choose documents
Grant the folders you want it to know about. Nothing outside them is read, and you can withdraw a folder at any time.
Ask privately
Ask in plain language. Answers that come from your documents name the file and passage they came from, so you can check them.
Stay in control
A status indicator shows where the work is happening. If something would be better handled by a cloud model, you are asked first - and you can say no.
A model is a file you download once
The part people find surprising is how ordinary it is. A model is a large file - a few gigabytes, sometimes more. It sits on your disk. When you ask a question, your computer does the arithmetic that turns your question into an answer, in the same sense that it does the arithmetic for a spreadsheet. Nothing is rented and nothing is metered.
What that costs you is capability. A model small enough to live on a laptop is not the largest model in the world, and it will lose to one on genuinely hard reasoning. What it wins is everything else: your documents stay put, it works on a plane, and nobody bills you per question.
Turning a folder off removes its index from this machine.
Granting a folder is the whole permission model
AI Stays Local reads what you grant and nothing else. Granting a folder builds an index of it on your machine - a summary structure that makes searching by meaning possible. Withdrawing the folder deletes that index.
There is no account holding your files, because there is no account holding your files. The Privacy Centre is designed to be the one screen that answers, at a glance, what is readable, what is indexed, and whether anything is permitted to leave.
An answer that shows its source
When an answer comes from your documents, it carries the file name and the passage it used. This is not a decoration. Language models make confident mistakes, and the only practical defence for someone whose professional obligations are on the line is being able to click through to the paragraph and read it yourself.
You
What notice period do I have to give Kaplan & Ruiz, and does it differ from the Nordwind agreement?
AI Stays Local
Thirty days for Kaplan & Ruiz, sixty for Nordwind. Both are counted from written notice, and the Nordwind clause requires it in writing to the registered address rather than by email.
Neither agreement allows termination for convenience inside the first year.