Privacy and data

Your code, prompts, and agent conversations stay on your Mac. Fermata does not send them anywhere. That is the short version. The rest of this page is the detail: what the Claude Code CLI sends on its own account, the two things Fermata can send if you let it, and what changes when you pair a phone.

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What stays local

Fermata is a desktop app that runs agents on your machine. Everything it produces lands on disk beside the work:

• Session and piece data in a .fermata/ folder inside each project.
• Your app preferences in ~/.fermata/settings.json.
• The git worktrees and branches it creates, in your own repositories.
• The analytics dashboard, which is computed from the Claude transcripts already on your Mac. See project analytics.

Fermata never uploads your repository. Delete the files and the data is gone; there is no copy held elsewhere. Three more things live outside .fermata/:

• The local MCP server’s auth token is generated on your Mac and kept in the Keychain; while the server runs it is also written into Fermata’s mcp.json discovery file, and Register copies it into ~/.claude.json. Neither file is sent anywhere.
• Settings → MCP’s Register writes Fermata’s connection into ~/.claude.json, the CLI’s own user config; Unregister removes it. See filing work from outside.
• The curated model picker reads, never writes, settings.json in your Claude config directory, to mirror the models and gateway you already set up there.

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What the Claude Code CLI sends

Fermata runs the build through Anthropic’s Claude Code CLI. When agents run, the CLI sends your prompts and code to Anthropic’s API, exactly as it does when you run claude in your own terminal. That traffic is between you and Anthropic under your own account, and Fermata adds nothing on top of it. Home’s plan-limit tiles read the same account through the same channel. While a window shows them, Fermata launches the CLI, runs the handshake, and sends one get_usage request every few minutes (five by default, stretching to thirty when the account reports no limits), under your own account. The probe never sends a user message, so it spends no tokens, and it runs only for Anthropic-hosted accounts: never against Bedrock, Vertex, or a gateway. See cost and usage. Separately, the app checks releases.fermata.run for updates. That request carries the app version and no install identifier.

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The first-run notice

The first time Fermata runs it shows a privacy notice before any telemetry starts. It offers two switches, both on by default, and it says plainly: “Fermata can send two kinds of anonymous data to help improve it. You choose which. Your code, prompts, file paths, and project names never leave your Mac.” There is no way past it except answering, and the answer is what the reporting services see first.

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The two switches

The same two choices live in Settings → General, under “Privacy”. Change your mind there any time. Neither ever collects your code, prompts, file paths, or project names. Crash reports are scrubbed stack traces, and usage data is anonymous counts. Both carry the same random per-install identifier, created on your Mac the first time the app runs, so the data is pseudonymous rather than anonymous: it distinguishes one installation from another and cannot be tied back to you. Fermata turns off the reporting SDKs’ own personal-data collection, so no IP address, username, or machine name is attached. The services still add their standard technical context, such as the app version and the operating system. The policy page lists it.

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Mobile sync

Sync is off until you turn it on and pair a device. With it on, Fermata mirrors session and piece records so your paired phone can read them. Pairing establishes an encryption key that exists only on your Mac and your phone. Not every field is encrypted, so here is the split. Encrypted on your Mac before upload. Agent message text, spec and strategy documents, agent descriptions, review notes, and piece summaries and learnings. Plaintext, because the push-notification service has to read them to build a notification. The opening prompt of a session (its first 200 characters), a preview of the latest message, the piece name and description, and agent names. Plaintext routing metadata. Session state, timestamps, token and cost totals, the project name and its path on your Mac, the git branch name, the model name, and the name of your Mac. That project path usually contains your macOS account name. Your repository is never uploaded. Code can appear inside an agent’s messages, and that message text is encrypted before it leaves the Mac.

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Where to read more

The full policy, including how long each kind of data is kept and who processes it, is at fermata.run/privacy.