Privacy Policy

Last updated 21 September 2026

ansta is a personal assistant you talk to over a messaging app. It connects to accounts you choose, does work on your behalf, and keeps a record of what it did. This page describes exactly what it stores and where that data goes.

The short version Your data is stored on a single server, in a database file that belongs only to you. Nothing is sold. Nothing is used for advertising. The content of your requests is sent to the AI model provider configured for this instance, because that is how the assistant understands you. You can have everything deleted.

Who runs this

ansta is operated as a private, invite-only service by its operator. There is no company behind it and no third-party analytics. Requests can be made directly to the assistant in chat.

What is collected

Data	Why
Your messaging account identifier, display name and username	To know who is talking and to enforce invite-only access
The content of your messages, and the assistant's replies	To understand requests and keep conversational context
An activity log of actions taken (what tool ran, its risk level, a short summary)	So you can audit what the assistant did on your behalf
Email address, if you join the waiting list or receive an invite	To manage access
Who invited you	Invites are limited per person; this enforces the limit
Access tokens for accounts you connect	To act on your behalf without asking you to log in again

There are no cookies for tracking. One session cookie is set if you sign in to the web interface; it only identifies your session.

Google account data

Connecting a Google account is optional. If you connect one, ansta requests only these permissions:

userinfo.email — to show you which account is connected.
gmail.readonly — to read your mail so it can summarise it and answer questions about it. Reading is required because a summary cannot be produced from message headers alone.
gmail.send — to send a message when you ask it to. This permission cannot read, modify or delete your mail.
drive.file — limited to files ansta itself creates. It cannot see the rest of your Drive.
calendar.events — to read your schedule and create events you ask for.
presentations — to build a slide deck when you ask for one. It is limited to decks ansta creates through this permission; it is not a way to browse decks you already own.

Limited Use

ansta's use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Specifically:

Google user data is used only to provide features you asked for.
It is never sold, and never used for advertising or profiling.
It is not used to develop, improve or train generalised AI or machine learning models.
No human reads your Google data except where you explicitly ask for support, where it is required for security, or where the law requires it.

Where your requests go

This is the part most policies leave out To understand what you write, ansta sends your message — and any context relevant to it, which can include content from a connected account — to an AI model provider over an encrypted connection. Without this the assistant cannot function.

The provider is chosen by the operator of this instance and can be changed. The provider processes the request and returns a result; ansta does not grant it standing access to your accounts. Providers have their own terms, and the operator is responsible for selecting providers whose terms forbid training on submitted content.

Other parties involved in delivery, none of which are given your account data:

The messaging platform carries the conversation, as it would any chat.
Cloudflare provides DNS and the encrypted tunnel that fronts the server.
Websites you ask ansta to visit see a browser visit, scoped to that site only.

How it is stored

Each person's data lives in a separate database file. This is a filesystem boundary, not a filter in a query, so one person's data cannot appear in another's results.
Access tokens and saved credentials are encrypted at rest with AES-GCM. Backups and database dumps therefore do not expose them.
The server accepts no direct inbound connections; traffic arrives through an encrypted tunnel, and the data directory is readable only by the application's own system account.

This protects against leaked backups, dumps and diagnostic output. It does not protect against someone who fully controls the server — encryption keys live there. We would rather say this plainly than imply end-to-end encryption that does not exist.

How long it is kept

Conversation history: the most recent 100 exchanges. Older ones fall away.
Activity log: kept, so the record of what was done stays auditable.
Tool output such as email previews is shown to you in chat but is deliberately not written into stored history.
Backups: retained 14 days, then deleted.
Access tokens: kept until you disconnect the account or ask for deletion.

Deleting your data

Ask the assistant to delete your data, or ask the operator. Your database file is removed, which takes with it your conversation history, activity log, saved credentials and connected-account tokens. Copies inside existing backups age out within 14 days.

You can disconnect a Google account at any time from your Google account permissions page, independently of ansta.

Children

ansta is not intended for anyone under 18 and access is invite-only.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that affects how your data is handled, the assistant will tell you in chat rather than quietly updating this page.