FERB Privacy Policy

Last updated: 15 October 2026

FERB is an open-source personal assistant for macOS. It is made of the FERB app, which runs on your Mac, and the FERB browser extension. This policy covers both.

What the extension does with your data

The extension connects only to the FERB app on the same Mac, through the browser's native messaging. It has no servers, sends no analytics and runs no code from the internet. It works only in browser profiles you pair with FERB. In those profiles it does three things:

• Tasks. To carry out a task you asked for, it reads the pages of tabs a FERB task opened or took over (text, accessibility tree, URL and title, and screenshots of that tab) and clicks, types, scrolls, uploads and downloads there.
• Activity history. It tells the FERB app each time a tab finishes loading a page or becomes the active tab: the page's address (with password, token and similar parameters removed) and its title. FERB keeps these in its activity history on your Mac. Private (incognito) windows are never recorded.
• Hiding secrets in screenshots. When FERB takes a screenshot of a browser window (it does this each time you send a message while that window is in front, and when a task looks at the window), the extension runs its own bundled script in the tab you can see to find where password and one-time-code fields are, so FERB can paint over them. It reads where those fields are, never what's in them.

It passes what it reads to the FERB app, and to nothing else.

What the FERB app does with your data

• Stored on your Mac. FERB keeps its records in a local database on your Mac: your tasks and what it did, its memory, and the activity it notices (the apps and windows you use, tab addresses and titles, text you type in ordinary fields, text you copy, and notifications). Typed and copied text is kept for 7 days, other activity for 30 days. Nothing is uploaded to a FERB server; there isn't one.
• Sent to the AI provider you connect. FERB sends context to the AI model service you set up in FERB (for example OpenAI through Codex, or Anthropic), under that provider's own terms: to carry out the tasks you ask for, and also to decide whether something it noticed is worth telling you, to write your daily summary and to organize its memory. This can include page text, a redacted screenshot of the window you have in front when you send a message, transcripts of sound FERB listens to during a task, and the parts of your recent activity that relate to your message.
• Optional triage service. If you add a Jev key, FERB also sends batches of redacted activity (app and window names, tab addresses and titles, typed and copied text, notifications) to Jev, a triage service run by typesafe.ai (api.typesafe.ai), which answers whether a moment may be worth telling you about. Without a Jev key nothing is sent there. When Jev says yes, the decision and the message to you are made by your AI provider (above).
• Speech stays on your Mac. Dictation in the FERB app, push-to-talk and the sound FERB listens to during a task are turned into text by Apple's speech recognition on your Mac only. Where your Mac can't recognize a language on-device, FERB says so instead of sending your voice anywhere. Recorded sound is deleted once it has been turned into text.
• Secrets are removed first. Before anything is stored or leaves your Mac, FERB removes known kinds of secrets: password fields (also while "show password" is on), one-time codes with a word like "code", "OTP" or "verification" near them, values written right after words like "password", "PIN", "API key" or "token", recognizable API keys and tokens, and card numbers. It works by recognizing these patterns, so a secret written some other way can get through. Passwords and one-time codes you give FERB are filled into pages through a sealed path and are never shown to the AI model.
• Not sold or shared. Your data is never sold, never used for advertising, never used to judge creditworthiness, and never used for anything except running FERB's features for you: your tasks, the things it tells you about, your daily summary and its memory.

Your control

You choose which browser profiles to pair, and you can remove the extension at any time. You can see everything FERB did with ferb trace and ferb timeline, and you can delete FERB's local data by uninstalling it with ferb uninstall --purge (plain ferb uninstall stops FERB but keeps its data).

Contact

Questions: kartikey060105@gmail.com