> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mauvely.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Privacy and licence

> What Sotto's local-only guarantee actually covers, where your data lives, and the licence Sotto is released under.

## The guarantee

**Audio never leaves your machine.** There is no server component, no account, and no analytics.

The only network request Sotto ever makes is downloading a speech model, from the official
whisper.cpp model repository, at the moment you ask for one. After that it never contacts anything
again — including for updates, which is why there is no update check.

The `LOCAL` badge on the dictation pill is there as a constant reminder of that promise.

## What this means in practice

* You can dictate confidential material without it being processed by a third party.
* You can work with no network connection at all.
* There is no account, so there is no account data.
* There is no usage data, because nothing is collected and nothing is sent.
* Nobody can be compelled to hand over your transcripts, because nobody else has them.

## What Sotto stores on your machine

| What                      | Where                                                     |
| ------------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| Your settings             | `~/.config/sotto/sotto.conf`                              |
| Downloaded speech models  | Sotto's data directory                                    |
| A portal permission token | In the settings file, if you granted RemoteDesktop access |

**Transcripts are not stored.** Text goes to the focused application, the clipboard, or the
notepad window, and Sotto does not keep a history of it.

Audio is held in memory only for as long as it takes to transcribe. Nothing is written to disk.

<Note>
  The clipboard is a shared resource on your desktop. If you use a clipboard manager with history,
  dictated text may end up in **its** history — which is your clipboard manager's behaviour, not
  Sotto's. Choose **Type it** as the output mode if that matters.
</Note>

## What Sotto cannot promise

* **It does not encrypt your disk.** Settings and models sit in plain files, like everything else
  in your home directory.
* **It cannot protect you from your own system.** Anything running as you can see your clipboard
  and read your configuration.
* **The paste path uses your clipboard**, as above.

## Licence

Sotto is being released as open source under the **Apache License 2.0**.

Apache-2.0 rather than MIT for two reasons that matter for a company-owned project:

* **An explicit patent grant.** Contributors and Mauvely grant patent rights along with copyright
  ones, which removes an ambiguity MIT leaves open.
* **Trademark clarity.** The licence covers the code without granting rights to the Mauvely and
  Sotto names, so you can fork the code freely without the fork looking like an official release.

It remains a permissive licence: you can use, modify, redistribute and build commercial products on
Sotto, including in closed-source software, with attribution and notice of changes.

### Third-party components

| Component                                              | Licence                                                                     |
| ------------------------------------------------------ | --------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| [whisper.cpp](https://github.com/ggml-org/whisper.cpp) | MIT                                                                         |
| Qt 6                                                   | LGPL v3, dynamically linked                                                 |
| LayerShellQt                                           | LGPL                                                                        |
| Whisper models                                         | Released by their publisher; downloaded at your request rather than bundled |

<Note>
  The licence is being finalised as part of a public release. Until the `LICENSE` file lands in the
  repository, treat this page as a statement of intent rather than the operative grant.
</Note>