Does Aiden Store Your Data? A Straight Answer on Privacy and Self-Hosting

Aiden's developer team clarified that its dev-board architecture has no Aiden-hosted backend, operating on a bring-your-own-provider model where users configure their own multimodal, STT, and TTS endpoints. The team acknowledged that data may be stored locally or by third-party providers, but admitted it has not yet published detailed privacy policies, including data retention, deletion, and encryption practices.

Short answer: our current dev-board architecture has no Aiden-hosted backend. Longer answer: that doesn't mean no data is ever stored anywhere, and we'd rather explain the actual data path than let you assume either way. Aiden runs on a bring-your-own-provider model. The board captures a connected device's display via HDMI capture, sends screenshots to a multimodal model endpoint you configure, and controls the target device through USB HID keyboard, pointer, touch . Voice works the same way — audio goes to the STT, LLM, and TTS endpoints you've selected. What that means concretely: This is a deliberate split from the usual pattern where the product company, the storage layer, and the model provider are the same entity. We separated those roles on purpose. Aiden also supports persistent context, preferences, and skill optimization. So "no backend" doesn't mean "nothing is ever stored" — a deployment can retain local context. We haven't yet published the exact schema, retention period, or deletion process for that, and we're not going to pretend we have. Same caveat applies to screenshots specifically: they may leave the board if you've configured a remote endpoint, and we haven't published a complete account of how caching/buffering works or what each provider retains on their end. | Topic | Status | |---|---| | Data retention periods | Not published yet | | Local memory deletion workflow | Not published yet | | Data export | Not published yet | | Default logging/diagnostics | Not published yet | | Telemetry/analytics use | No public statement yet | | Storage jurisdictions | Not published yet | | Encryption/key management | Not published yet | We're listing this because the absence of a published policy shouldn't be read either way — not as "they're hiding something" and not as "everything's fine." We just haven't written it up yet. Your configuration is doing as much work as the hardware. A cloud endpoint, a self-hosted model, and a fully local model produce three different data-flow outcomes from the exact same physical device. Before you point Aiden at sensitive workflows, check what your chosen model/STT/TTS provider actually does with inputs — that's now part of your privacy surface, not an implementation detail. Repo: github.com/AidenAI-IO/aiden-firmware https://github.com/AidenAI-IO/aiden-firmware Discord: discord.com/invite/bcJavjcnYz https://discord.com/invite/bcJavjcnYz — our engineers answer technical questions directly.