What Desken does with data

The short answer: Desken is a program that runs on your own machine. We operate no server, your texts and sources never pass through us, and you create no account with us. Below are the exceptions that do exist — there are a few, and they should be readable without hunting.

Stays on your machine

• Your projects: source material, drafts, fact-checks, approvals and exports. They sit as ordinary files in a folder you choose.
• Your API keys. They are encrypted with the computer's own keychain — Keychain on Mac, DPAPI on Windows — and are never sent to us.
• Your settings, templates and source directory.

Sent to the AI providers — the ones you choose

When you run an AI node, the prompt and the material connected to that node are sent straight from your machine to the provider that node uses, with your own key. It does not go through us. Which providers may receive anything is up to you under Settings → Data protection; in 🛡 Offline mode nothing is sent to a cloud AI provider; only local models run. What the provider then does with the material is governed by their terms — which is precisely why the choice is yours and not ours.

Your voice — only when you press the microphone

In Ask about the canvas you can speak instead of typing. The microphone is only on from the moment you press 🎙 until you pause or press it again. The recording is sent with your own key directly from your machine to Groq or OpenAI (Whisper) to be turned into text, and it is not stored — neither on your machine nor by us. The answer is read aloud in a natural voice: if you have an ElevenLabs key, the text of the answer is sent to ElevenLabs, otherwise to OpenAI, solely to be turned into speech. Without either, or in 🛡 Offline, your computer's own voice reads it and the text never leaves the machine. In Offline the microphone is switched off.

Ask about the canvas — the structure, and the node you ask about

The chat sends the structure of the canvas and the names of the nodes to the model you have chosen. The content of a node — a draft, a fact-check, a source — is sent only when you ask about that particular node, at most two at a time, and the chat shows which ones it read. It passes through the same guard as the nodes' own calls, so Offline and your approved providers apply here too. The conversation is not saved.

Sent to the MCP servers you connect yourself

The MCP connector node fetches material from an MCP server (Model Context Protocol) whose address you enter on the node yourself. What is sent to the server is what is on the node: the name of the tool or resource you have chosen, the arguments you have written and the headers you have added — for instance an access key for the server. Nothing from the rest of the project is sent: no sources, no drafts and no text from other nodes — with one exception that you choose yourself: if you write {{input}} in the arguments, it is replaced with the text from the nodes connected into the MCP node (for example search terms from an AI node), and that text is sent to the server. Without {{input}}, that does not happen. The request goes straight from your machine to the server, not through us.

Like URL and API import, the MCP node counts as bringing data in, so it is not affected by the data protection mode — it also runs in 🛡 Offline if the machine is online. Who runs the server, and what they do with what is sent, depends on the server you choose. A tool call can also make the server do something, depending on the tool, and that happens again on every run. If the address is unencrypted (http://), Desken asks first.

If you choose Sign in (OAuth) instead of headers, Desken also contacts the server’s sign-in service: it fetches the server’s sign-in addresses, registers Desken as a client (the name “Desken” and a return address on your own machine) and opens the server’s own sign-in page in your browser. Your password is typed there and is never seen by Desken. The access key you get back is stored encrypted on your machine and is only sent to the server it belongs to — not to us, and not in the project file. You can sign out on the node, and it is deleted.

Sent to Scite when you use Research search

The Research search node finds scientific articles in Scite. Only the search itself is sent to Scite — a short search string in English, the number of articles and possibly a year. Your text, your sources and your drafts are not sent to Scite. Desken uses your own Scite account: you sign in on Scite’s own page in your browser, your password is never seen by Desken, and the access is stored encrypted on your machine and not in the project file. Scite’s own terms and privacy policy apply to your use of Scite.

If you let Desken write the search from the connected text, the flow’s language model reads the text to write the search string — on the same terms as any other AI node. If you write the search yourself, no text is read. The node is blocked in 🛡 Offline, and in 🔐 Scite must be approved under Data protection. The reply from Scite (titles, abstracts and excerpts) is treated as untrusted text when it is passed on to AI nodes.

Sent to the publisher

• When you create a user: your name and email. This is the publisher's list of who is using the beta, and it is stored as an issue in a private code repository at GitHub. Nothing from your projects goes with it. Write to us if you want to be removed from the list.
• If you turn telemetry on: which features are used — node type, which model, whether the run succeeded — plus app version and language. Never content. It is off by default, is switched on under Settings, and goes to an EU-hosted service (Aptabase).
• If you turn crash reports on: when Desken crashes, a technical report is sent to Sentry — the error type, a stack trace, the Desken version and the operating system. The path to your home folder is masked before the report is sent, so your user name is not included. If an error message mentions a file or a project folder, its name can still appear in the report. Ordinary errors are only reported from the program's background process, not from the part that shows and edits your projects. If part of the program crashes outright — for instance because it runs out of memory — a minidump is included: a technical snapshot of the program's state at that moment. It is not your files, but in rare cases it can contain fragments of whatever was in memory, including text from an open project. As with any web service, Sentry can see the IP address the report comes from. Crash reports are off by default, are switched on under Settings → Beta & feedback independently of telemetry, and the choice takes effect the next time Desken starts.
• When you download the app: ordinary server logs at Vercel, our hosting provider.
• While you are a beta user: no more than once a day, the app asks desken.dk whether the beta has ended. The request contains nothing about you or your projects — it is an ordinary request that leaves only the same server logs at Vercel as above. The answer is a message the app checks itself against a digital signature. If desken.dk cannot be reached, the beta simply continues.
• If you buy a licence: payment takes place on Lemon Squeezy's checkout page, and whatever you enter there is handled by Lemon Squeezy. When you enter the licence key in Desken, the app sends the key and a random name for the installation — for instance “Desken Mac 3f9a2c”, not your computer's name — to Lemon Squeezy to activate it. After that, no more than once a day, the app checks that the licence is still valid, using the key and the installation's ID. These requests go straight from your machine to Lemon Squeezy. If you have been given a licence key against an invoice, it is checked on the machine itself instead, and nothing is sent.
• When the app checks for updates: a request to GitHub to see whether a newer version exists.

Never sent

Your sources, your drafts, your finished texts, your fact-checks and your API keys. They do not pass through us in normal use, and they are not included in crash reports — with the one caveat about minidumps above.

This page is a technical description of what the program actually does — written to be usable by an IT department assessing Desken. It is not a legal data processing agreement; one will be drawn up before sales open. Questions: hej@grumpyproductions.dk.