Tools

We’ve scouted the web, dug through privacy policies, and tested a few tools.

Below are four that keep your thoughts your thoughts. Each section tells you what it does and why it respects your privacy.

Clipbeam – The offline “second brain” for Mac

• What it is: A desktop app that acts as an AI‑enhanced knowledge base. Organizes and recalls your notes, links, screenshots, voice notes and other files so you never lose track of important info.
• Why it’s private: All processing happens on‑device. Your data never leaves your Mac.

Duck.ai – DuckDuckGo’s anonymous chatbot

• What it is: A web‑based chat where you can pick from Claude, Llama, Mistral or GPT models.
• Why it’s private: The service strips all personal metadata and never stores conversation history on its servers. Chats live locally in your browser and are auto‑deleted after the session (or at most 30 days on the provider side).

Lumo – Proton’s zero‑access encrypted assistant

• What it is: An AI helper built by the team behind ProtonMail.
• Why it’s private: Uses zero‑access encryption—even Proton can’t read your messages. Prompts are stored only in an encrypted vault you control and never get used to train models.

Ollama – Run large language models on your own machine

• What it is: A lightweight runtime that lets you download open‑source LLMs (Llama 2, Mistral, etc.) and run them locally.
• Why it’s private: 100 % local inference—no internet traffic unless you choose it. Your prompts never leave your hardware.