Utsuwa is an open-source AI companion built to be local-first. This policy explains what happens to your data when you use the Utsuwa website and hosted web app (utsuwa.ai and its subdomains) and the Utsuwa desktop app, operated by Ordinary Company Group LLC. The short version: your companion lives on your device, and we like it that way.
What we don't collect
Utsuwa has no account system, so we never ask for your name, email address, or a password. We run no analytics or tracking scripts on the website or in the app, we set no advertising or tracking cookies, and we show no ads. There is no database of users on our side, and we can't see your conversations. We couldn't sell your personal information if we wanted to, because we don't have any.
Where your data lives
Everything that makes your companion yours lives on your device: conversation history, extracted memories, companion state, persona and display settings, and the API keys you enter. In the web app this is your browser's local storage (IndexedDB and localStorage); in the desktop app it's the app's own local storage on your computer. None of it is uploaded to or stored on our servers.
To delete your data, use the reset options in the app's settings, clear your browser's site data, or uninstall the desktop app. There is no copy on our side to ask us to delete.
How your messages reach your AI provider
Utsuwa is bring-your-own-AI: you connect it to a provider you choose (for example OpenAI, Anthropic, or a local model through Ollama or LM Studio) using your own API key. How your messages travel depends on where you run Utsuwa:
- Desktop app: your messages go directly from your device to your chosen provider. They do not pass through our servers.
- Web app: because of browser cross-origin restrictions, requests to cloud providers may be relayed through our servers. The relay forwards your request to your provider and streams the response back to you. We do not store your messages or API keys, and we do not write conversation content to our logs.
- Local providers: if you use Ollama or LM Studio, your conversations never leave your machine or local network at all.
Once a message reaches your provider, that provider's own privacy policy governs how it is handled. We encourage you to review the data-use policies of whichever provider you connect.
Voice features
If you use voice chat, microphone audio is captured only while you're actively using it and is sent directly from your device to the speech provider you configured for transcription. Generated speech works the same way in reverse. We don't receive or store your audio.
Memory runs on your device
Semantic search over your companion's memories happens entirely on your device, using a small embedding model that runs locally in the app. The model file is downloaded once from a public CDN (Hugging Face). The memories themselves are stored in your local storage like everything else.
Third-party services we rely on
- Your AI providers process the messages and audio you send them under their own privacy policies.
- Vercel hosts the website and web app. Like any host, it produces standard, short-lived infrastructure logs (such as IP addresses and request timestamps) as part of serving pages. We don't use these to identify or profile anyone.
- GitHub serves our source code, releases, and desktop downloads. The desktop app also checks GitHub Releases for updates, so GitHub receives standard request data (like your IP address) when it does.
- Hugging Face serves the on-device memory model file the first time the app loads it.
Age
Utsuwa is intended for adults aged 18 and over. It is not designed for or directed at anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, minors included, since we don't collect personal information at all.
Changes to this policy
If we change this policy, we'll update this page and the date at the top. If a change is significant (for example, if a future feature ever introduces data collection), we'll say so clearly in our release notes.
Contact
The fastest way to reach us is on GitHub. Utsuwa is maintained by Ordinary Company Group LLC, a limited liability company formed in Ohio, USA.