What we collect

Effective date: 3 November 2026 · Version: collect-2026-11-03

The plain-language companion to the Privacy Policy. If the two disagree, the Privacy Policy wins.

If you install `octyl` but haven’t signed in yet

You need an account to start agents (only octyl --demo runs signed out). Until you sign in we get nothing except what any download gets: your IP address and user agent when you install or update.

Things we never get

Your code, diffs or file contents
Your prompts or task text, or what the agents say back
File names, paths, repository names, branch names, commit messages or SHAs
Terminal output and environment variables
Your Claude, ChatGPT/Codex, Gemini or other AI tool logins, tokens or API keys. You sign in to those tools yourself. We never see, store or pass on those credentials, and their traffic goes straight to their makers.

Octyl is not affiliated with those AI companies. Their rules apply to how you use their tools, and they can limit your account. Running many agents at once may count against your plan’s limits with them.

Your AI tools’ own reporting

For every crew member it runs, Octyl turns off that AI tool’s own telemetry and usage reporting where the tool offers a way, and sets DO_NOT_TRACK=1 for it. Some tools offer no way to turn it off; their makers’ policies apply to what those tools send.

Your account, through Clerk: name, username, email and phone number (each confirmed with a code when you sign up) and how you sign in (GitHub, Google or a passkey). Clerk keeps your password; we never see it.
A record of each machine you link (when created, last used, a label) so you can revoke it.
What plan you have and how many agents you can run.

Receipts, on every plan

Contributing receipts is how Octyl works, on every plan: Free (12 agents), the Pilot (12 agents and teams of 3, by invitation), and the paid plans. After every agent run, octyl sends us a small receipt about that run. There’s no switch that turns it off. It holds numbers and labels, like:

runtime: claude-code 2.x   model: <model name>   duration: 14m
exit: success   commits: 2   tokens: 182,400   est. cost: $0.84
task: bugfix   languages: go, ts   diff: m   files: 2-5   repo: 1k-10k

It also says what produced the run and what kind of work it was, so the Reef can compare like with like:

model: claude-opus-5-5 (20261101, reported)   effort: high   permission: auto_edit
served: hosted_frontier / anthropic   extensions: 3 public (by registry id), 2 others counted
local models only: Apple M3 Max, 64-128 GB, Q4_K_M, temperature 0.7
work: software / bug_fix   artifacts: code files 2-5   frameworks: react   locale: en

Only public names leave your machine: a model name that isn’t public is sent as “other”, private plugins and MCP servers are only counted, and we never get base URLs, host names, IP addresses or hardware serial numbers. Rare setups are generalized (exact version to model family, exact chip to vendor and class) until at least 20 people and 20 runs share them, or not published at all.

A week and a month later octyl may send whether that work got merged, reverted or heavily rewritten. All of that is worked out on your computer.

Who it’s linked to. On our side, your receipts are stored under a scrambled code made from your account (a pseudonym), never your name, email, team or company. We use the link only to delete your contributions, handle a concern you report, and match those later updates to their receipt.

You can see exactly what was sent, byte for byte, at any time:

octyl contribute show --next shows the exact receipt your next run would send, before it exists; octyl contribute show lists what’s waiting and what was sent.
Every byte that leaves your machine is first written to ~/.octyl/transmissions/log.jsonl (append-only). octyl contribute log prints it (--raw for the exact bytes) and octyl contribute export copies it. If that file can’t be written, nothing is sent.
At app.octyl.ai/reef you can read your most recent receipts exactly as we store them.

If something looks like it identifies you, press the report button next to the receipt at app.octyl.ai/reef or run octyl contribute report <receipt-id>. From that moment the receipt is held out of the Reef; a person looks at it, scrubs the field if it shouldn’t be there, and answers within 5 business days. Watch the status (received, reviewing, scrubbed or no issue found) with octyl contribute concerns.

What we do with receipts:

Run Octyl.
Publish combined results in the Reef, like which AI tools and models do best at which kinds of tasks. Only groups of at least 20 people and 20 runs, never attributed to a person, team or organization, and never your individual receipts.
Improve Octyl.

We don’t license Reef data today. If we ever do, it will be deidentified aggregates only, and we’ll tell you first.

Your choices: octyl contribute delete removes your receipts from Octyl (raw upload copies expire within 90 days), or delete your whole account. Results already published in the Reef stay as they are: they’re group totals that never had your name on them. Nothing is sent while you start no agents.

Trying to game the Reef (fake runs, extra accounts, paying people to run something) can get the accounts involved suspended or closed. See the Acceptable Use Policy.

We follow the CCPA for everyone, wherever you live. See the Notice of Financial Incentive in the Privacy Policy (section 6A).

Telemetry and crash reports

Off unless you turn them on with octyl telemetry on, and only while signed in. octyl telemetry off or OCTYL_TELEMETRY=0 stops them. Crash reports have your home folder, emails and anything that looks like a key scrubbed out, and a copy is always kept in ~/.octyl/crash/ so you can see it.

The web app

app.octyl.ai keeps your settings and teams, and uses PostHog to see which pages and features get used, with a cookie, linked to your account.

The team relay

When you work in a team, octyl tells teammates roughly where you are working so you don’t collide. The relay sees scrambled (hashed) names for your repo, files and functions, plus branch names, commit SHAs and line numbers. Notes can be sealed so only your team can read them. The relay never has the key, never sees code, and forgets messages after about 10 minutes. Messages between teammates are end-to-end encrypted; the relay holds them, sealed, for up to 7 days for a device that’s offline.

The phone app

Pair it by scanning a code; the camera picture stays on the phone. It gets status updates for your own agents and sends back your approvals and short answers, signed and sealed. If you turn on notifications, your browser’s push service delivers them.

Questions

privacy@octyl.ai