Privacy

Applies to the Alchemy app for macOS and the Alchemy Web Clipper browser extension. Last updated July 21, 2026.

The short version

Alchemy is local-first software. There are no accounts, no telemetry, no analytics, and no servers of ours to send anything to. Your data lives in files on your Mac, and the only network requests made are the ones you configure it to make.

The browser extension

• Collects nothing and stores nothing.
• Has no host permissions and makes no network requests of any kind.
• When you click its button or menu items, it reads the current tab's URL, title, or your selected text — and passes them directly to the Alchemy app on your Mac via an alchemy:// link. That hand-off is the extension's entire function.

The app

• Your sources (documents, pages, repositories, notes, chats) are stored in a local database under ~/Library/Application Support. Search indexing and embeddings run on-device by default.
• Network requests happen only at your direction: fetching a URL or repository you add, and talking to AI providers you explicitly configure. If you configure a cloud provider, the text needed to answer your question is sent to that provider under their privacy terms; if you use local or on-device models, nothing leaves the machine.
• API keys are stored locally in the app's config file and sent only to the provider they belong to. Subscription CLIs (Claude Code, Codex, and similar) use their own sign-ins; Alchemy never sees or stores those credentials.
• Software updates check GitHub Releases for new signed builds. No identifiers are sent beyond an ordinary HTTP request.

What we can see

Nothing. We operate no backend, so there is nothing for us to log, aggregate, sell, or lose. This policy can only change alongside the source code — both are public at github.com/thrashr888/alchemy.

Contact

Questions or concerns: open an issue at github.com/thrashr888/alchemy/issues.

Alchemy is free and open source software (MPL-2.0).