Privacy policy
Tab Pilot Privacy Policy
Tab Pilot is local-first. It has no account system, collects no analytics, and makes no network requests while you browse. The one exception is its optional AI features: when you deliberately ask a question, text is sent to a server so it can be answered. This page says exactly what, and to whom.
What stays on your device
All of the following is stored in your browser's extension storage, on the device you are using. It is never synced, uploaded, or transmitted:
- Settings — theme, layout, hotkey, and which features you enabled.
- Text snippets and their triggers.
- Clipboard history, if you turn it on.
- A frecency record — which URLs you open from the palette and how recently — used only to order your own results.
- A random identifier, generated on your device, used to rate-limit the AI features. It is not linked to you, your browser profile, or anything else.
What it reads, and never sends
To show you search results, the palette reads your open tabs, tab groups, browsing history and bookmarks through Chrome's extension APIs. This happens on your device, as you type, and the results are shown only to you. None of it is transmitted anywhere — not your history, not your bookmarks, not your list of open tabs.
Web search
When no tab, history entry or bookmark matches what you typed, the palette offers to search the web. Choosing that row hands your query to the search engine your browser is already configured to use — Tab Pilot does not see or store the result, and the query goes to your search provider exactly as it would from the address bar. You can point this at a different engine, such as DuckDuckGo, in the palette's settings.
Clipboard history
Off by default. When you enable it, Tab Pilot records the last 50 things you copy from web pages so you can search them from the palette.
- Copies from password fields are always skipped.
- Tab Pilot never reads your clipboard. It only observes copy events as they happen, which is why it needs no clipboard permission.
- Turning the feature off deletes the stored history immediately.
The AI features
AI answers are available by default in new installs, but Tab Pilot sends nothing until you explicitly ask a question. Both answer through JanteChai, an AI service I also build. The AI toggle lets you hide these actions; it does not send anything by itself.
AI answers in the palette
When AI answers are enabled and you press Enter on the "Ask" row, the question you typed is sent to JanteChai. Nothing else goes with it — not the page you are on, not your tabs, not your history.
Chat with this tab
When you open the side panel, accept its consent screen, and ask a question, Tab Pilot sends the following to JanteChai:
- Your question.
- The current tab's title.
- The current tab's URL.
- The visible text of that tab, truncated to 12,000 characters. Only the tab you are looking at — never your other tabs.
Some pages are excluded automatically and cannot be chatted with: mail, banking and sign-in sites, and any page whose address carries a query string, since those often contain tokens or search terms.
Text you send is processed by JanteChai's upstream AI providers, who may retain it under their own policies. This is the honest version: it is not a private or local model, and I cannot promise on their behalf that it is discarded. If a page is sensitive, do not ask about it.
How requests are authenticated
There is no login. Your browser solves a small computational puzzle to obtain a short-lived anonymous token, which expires after fifteen minutes. The token carries the random device identifier described above and nothing else — no name, no email, no browser fingerprint.
Snippet sync
Tab Pilot can sync your text snippets with a Stashflow Vault account. This is entirely optional and inactive unless you connect an account yourself. If you never connect one, no snippet ever leaves your device.
What Tab Pilot never does
- No account, no sign-up, no email address required.
- No analytics, usage tracking, crash reporting, or advertising.
- No selling or sharing of data with third parties.
- No background network activity. Nothing is sent unless you ask a question or connect a Vault account.
Removing your data
Uninstalling Tab Pilot deletes everything it stored, since all of it lives in your browser's extension storage. Clipboard history can be wiped at any time by turning the feature off. For questions about data held by the AI service, write to the address below.
Changes
If a future version sends something this page does not describe, this page will be updated before that version ships, and the effective date above will change.