The short version
Aethelgard is a local-first application. Your financial data is stored exclusively on your own device and never transmitted to us. We do not collect, store, or process your personal financial information. If you turn on Sentinel's optional AI features, only sanitised, anonymised aggregates are sent for processing — never your raw data (see section 3).
1. Who we are
Aethelgard is a software product developed and sold by its creator ("we", "us"). You can contact us at contact@aethelgard.finance.
2. Your financial data
All data you enter into Aethelgard — transactions, account balances, entity information, documents — is stored locally on your device in a SQLite database. Backups exported from the app are encrypted with AES-256-GCM (with an Argon2id-derived key from your passphrase) before they leave your machine. At-rest encryption of the live vault file via SQLCipher AES-256 is available as an option — off by default, switched on by you in Settings → Vault, and unlocked with your PIN at startup (with a one-time recovery code issued as a backup way in). This data is:
- Never transmitted to our servers
- Never shared with third parties
- Not accessible to us under any circumstances
- Fully under your control at all times
If you choose to configure encrypted backups via WebDAV, those backups are sent to your own storage endpoint — not ours. They are encrypted on your device before leaving it, and we never receive or have access to them.
3. Aethelgard Sentinel — AI features
Aethelgard Sentinel includes optional AI features (summaries, investment memos, and narrated exports). These are off by default and only run when you switch them on. When they are on, this is exactly what happens:
- What leaves your device: only sanitised, anonymised aggregates. Before any AI call, an on-device sanitisation layer strips names, account numbers, and security identifiers (ISINs), and coarsens amounts to broad magnitude bands. Your raw positions, balances, and identities never leave your machine. A leak-test suite fails our build if any identifier would escape.
- Where it goes: in bring-your-own-key mode, requests go directly to Anthropic under your own API key. In managed mode, requests route through our proxy to Anthropic; the proxy logs only a hashed licence identifier, the model name, and a token-count estimate — never the content of any request or response.
- Retention: Anthropic does not use this data to train its models. Anthropic may retain API inputs and outputs for up to 30 days for trust-and-safety purposes before deletion, under its commercial terms. We are pursuing a zero-data-retention agreement with Anthropic and will update this policy when it is in place.
Every accepted AI output is recorded in a tamper-evident audit ledger inside your local vault, so you can always see what was generated and when. If you never enable AI, nothing is ever sent.
4. Information we do collect
When you purchase a license, our payment processor Paddle collects your payment details and email address in order to process the transaction and deliver your license key. This is subject to Paddle's Privacy Policy.
We receive your email address from Paddle solely to deliver your license key. We do not add you to marketing lists without your consent.
The Aethelgard application itself collects no telemetry, crash reports, usage analytics, or any other data from your device.
5. This website
This website (aethelgard.finance) is hosted on Vercel. Vercel may collect standard web server logs (IP address, browser type, pages visited) for infrastructure and security purposes, subject to Vercel's Privacy Policy. We do not use any analytics, tracking, or advertising scripts on this website.
6. License key delivery
After purchase, we send your license key to the email address provided at checkout. We use Resend to deliver this email. Your email address is used only for this purpose and is not retained for marketing.
7. Your rights
Under UK GDPR and applicable data protection law, you have the right to access, correct, or request deletion of any personal data we hold about you. Given that we hold only your email address (for license delivery), requests can be made to contact@aethelgard.finance.
8. Changes to this policy
We will post any material changes to this policy on this page and update the "last updated" date above. Continued use of the software after changes constitutes acceptance.
9. Contact
Questions about this policy: contact@aethelgard.finance