Where your files go

Last updated 22 October 2026

Jean runs in your browser and keeps everything it works with on your device. Something leaves your device only when an answer needs it, and then it goes to the brain you chose, a service you connected or a site you opened. Here is where things go for each choice, and how each answer tells you where it was done. The privacy policy says the same in full; if the two ever differ, the policy applies.

Before you ask anything

• Opening Jean contacts only the address you opened it from, to fetch Jean’s own files.
• No account, no cookies, no analytics. Jean has no server that sees what you write.
• Your tasks, files, memory, settings and keys stay in this browser’s storage, on this device, encrypted with a key that never leaves it.
• Your keys are never in a backup, a sync or a share, and no brain ever reads them.

When you ask, it depends on the brain

A brain is the AI that writes the answer. The brain you choose decides where your request goes, and under each answer, a button says where it actually went.

Auto picks a brain for each request. Once Intuition is on and you have a private brain or a server on this computer, a request that shares personal, health, financial or confidential information goes there, and so does every request while you’re offline.

Keep on this device, in Settings › Brains, for all your work or for one project, lets only a brain on this device or on this computer answer. While nothing will leave, the box says so.

What a brain in the cloud reads

For each request, a brain is sent what it needs to answer. A private brain reads the same, on your device.

Each answer says where it was done

Under each answer, About this answer shows how long it took and what it cost. It names each brain that answered, with the address it was reached at when that was outside your device, and lists the other addresses the page reached meanwhile. It takes all this from your browser’s own record of the page’s requests, not from what Jean meant to do, and opens with one of four labels:

• Kept private: every brain was on this device, and the page reached nothing outside it.
• Done in the cloud: a brain in the cloud answered, so the task was sent there.
• Sent outside this device: the brains were on this device, but something else went out, such as a web search.
• Not certified: the browser’s record wasn’t kept, for an answer from before the button existed, for example.

The browser’s record doesn’t cover everything. It leaves out downloads Jean makes in the background, such as a brain’s files, which carry nothing of yours; pages shown in Jean’s browser, and pages you allowed to go online, which belong to their sites; requests cut short by Stop; and Jean’s own address, which serves its files. When two tasks are answered at once, a request counts for both, which can only make an answer look less private than it was.

The certificate

Under Certificate, you can save a file that proves how an answer was made. Your device seals it with a key that never leaves it, whose fingerprint is in Settings › Approvals.

• Save the certificate: when, where and by which brains the answer was made, without what was said. Your words are only in it as salted fingerprints, which can’t be read back or guessed, so it’s safe to share.
• Save the proof: the certificate, plus your request and the answer, for whoever needs to see them.
• Witnesses stay off until you tick them, or ask on a saved certificate’s card to have it dated, and Settings › Approvals can name others. A timestamp receives a fingerprint of the certificate’s signature, and a public log receives the signature and your device’s seal. Neither receives your words, and the log is public and permanent.
• Anyone can check a certificate or a proof on Jean’s check page, even offline, or with standard tools. Checking that a public log vouches for one first downloads the log’s key, once you agree.

Other things that leave, only when you use them

• Web search sends your search words to whatever searches: Wikipedia in your language by default, for brains without a search of their own; Vikidia or your own offline library if you turn them on; a search service you connect, or give your own key to; or the brain’s own search.
• Connections exchange with their service only what your requests need: what Jean reads there, and what it writes or sends after asking you first. Services that refuse browsers are reached through a gateway that keeps nothing.
• Jean’s browser visits the sites you open, as any browser would.
• The Computer asks before reaching a new site, and fetches the packages it installs from PyPI and npm, Python’s and JavaScript’s public package catalogues.
• Sharing by link uploads a copy sealed in your browser. The key is in the link, after the #, which browsers never send, so the host can’t read the copy.
• Sync copies your tasks and files to a folder you choose, which a cloud drive may carry. Settings and keys never go there.
• A backup is a file you download. Your keys are never in it.
• Extensions are other people’s code. They run walled off, with no internet of their own, but read what each says it does.

Every address Jean contacts

Here is every address Jean can reach, when, and what each receives. These are jean.is’s; a copy of Jean an organisation serves names its own, and can turn each one off and lock everything else out with one header in its web server.

Jean’s own skills, the instruments scores play and the fonts come with Jean, from the address it’s served from. Speech is recognised on your device, never by your browser’s online service, and answers are read aloud with your system’s own voices.