Privacy & data

Shimmer's design centers on one principle: your data, your box, your agent.

Your own box

Every user gets an isolated environment. That means a private Matrix (opens in a new tab) homeserver with federation off, plus a dedicated agent runtime. Your conversations, knowledge base, and context live in your box, not in a shared multi-tenant pool.

Voice stays local

Voice notes and the onboarding interview are transcribed by a local speech-to-text server on the internal network. Audio is never sent to a third-party speech API and never leaves the host.

You stay in command

Shimmer is proactive, but it proposes. It does not act on your behalf without you. Briefs, drafts, and suggestions are surfaced for your approval. Nothing is sent until you say so.

Your keys, your sign-in

Sign-in is a passkey: your email plus Face ID, Touch ID, or your device PIN. There is no password for an attacker to phish. Behind the scenes your account holds a managed cryptographic key in secure hardware that signs on your behalf, and sessions are signed, time-limited cookies. Bringing your own crypto wallet as a sign-in is on the roadmap.

Connected sources: credentials in an enclave

When you connect a source (Google or Microsoft calendar, inbox, contacts), consent runs on a verified app and the resulting credential is held by a hardware-isolated credential broker operated by human.tech (opens in a new tab). The token is never stored on Shimmer's servers: reads are brokered on demand, and outbound actions additionally require your explicit approval before they execute. You choose what to connect, each connector row shows exactly which accounts are linked, and you can disconnect at any time (or revoke from your Google/Microsoft account directly).

Invite-only by design

Signups are gated by an allowlist. Everyone else joins a waitlist and is admitted deliberately. This keeps the service personal and the blast radius small while it grows.

Have a specific data-handling question for a deployment? Write to hello@shimmer.fyi.

Next: how it is all built →