Enforced in the code, not promised in a footer.
Agents read your files, run your commands and hold your credentials. That only works if the boundaries are real. Here is exactly where ours are drawn, and what we are still hardening.
Every request and response body on the API is encrypted end to end by middleware, on top of TLS — not just the login call, the whole surface. New endpoints inherit it automatically; there is no opt-out path for a route to forget.
Sensitive content is ciphered before it reaches storage, through the repositories that own it. Chat and Code messages, workspace metadata and generated documents are written encrypted, so a database file on its own is not a transcript.
Provider credentials use their own cipher, distinct from content encryption, and live in one store scoped to your user. They are never logged, never sent to the frontend in the clear, and never placed in an environment variable or an image.
Every API request carries a verified identity token, and ownership is checked in the application layer — never inferred from what the client claims. The frontend caches nothing as truth and re-reads the backend on every view.
File, search, git and language-server tools are confined to your workspace root. Absolute paths and parent-directory escapes are rejected before a tool runs, and containment is re-checked at the filesystem layer.
Your voice is biometric data. Raw microphone capture is pitch-shifted, filtered and downmixed on-device, and the original recording is dropped from memory. Only the modulated audio is ever sent, you preview and edit the transcript first, and no audio is stored or logged.
Deployment posture during the beta
We do not co-host mutually distrusting tenants. During the private beta each trust domain runs against its own instance, which is why access is allowlisted rather than open.
Credentials live in the platform's secret manager and environment, never inside a workspace an agent can browse, and never in the frontend bundle.
Directory deletes move to a workspace trash rather than vanishing, risky commands are classified before they run, and hooks can block an action outright.
Per-tenant runtime sandboxing of the agent's terminal is the next piece of work, and it is the reason the beta is invitation-only rather than open sign-up. We would rather say that plainly than imply otherwise.
Working principles
- The backend is the only source of truth; the client is never trusted
- Everything is scoped by user, at every layer
- No secrets in source, images, logs or the frontend bundle
- Server-side pagination, so no endpoint can be made to dump a table
- Rate limits and per-user budgets on agent runs
- Security-relevant behaviour is written down as a rule and tested
Questions about any of this?
Ask us directlyByte Poet is in private beta. Sign-in is limited to allowlisted accounts. Request access