What goes where
SphereHarness is built so that your prompts and your CAD work go from your PC to services you chose, not through our servers. The one exception is a message you send from Microsoft Teams or your own WhatsApp number: we relay it to your PC and store none of it. This page lists each kind of traffic, where it goes and what it carries.
From version 1.3.0. This page describes the desktop agent and the CAD add-ins version 1.3.0 and later. Earlier versions send each CAD operation (the operation, its arguments and its result, and the name and path of the open document) through the SphereHarness server on its way to the add-in. Update the agent and every add-in to 1.3.0 to stop that. Until customers have updated, our server keeps that route open for the earlier versions.
The picture
- Your choice Your AI provider Its API with your own key, or a coding agent on your PC
- Between your PC and your AI provider: Prompts, CAD context, answers
- Your PC SphereHarness desktop agent local connection on the same PC CAD add-ins Your CAD system, your files
- Between your PC and your messaging apps: Teams and WhatsApp: relayed through SphereHarness, not stored. Telegram: direct
- Your messaging apps Microsoft Teams The SphereHarness Teams app; WhatsApp on your own Twilio number; your own Telegram bot
- Between your PC and the SphereHarness server: Sign-in, licence check, update check, support requests you send, community posts and packages you publish; Teams and WhatsApp messages you relay, passed on and not stored
- SphereHarness server Account, licence, downloads and updates, support, community No prompts typed on your PC, no answers, no CAD operations. Teams and WhatsApp messages relayed in memory, never stored
What does not reach SphereHarness
| What | Where it goes | Our server |
|---|---|---|
| Your prompts, the conversation, attachments and the AI's answers | The AI you chose in the desktop agent: the provider's API, called with your own key, or the coding agent on your PC (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI). | Does not receive them |
| The CAD context the AI needs | Your AI provider, as part of the conversation: names, dimensions, feature and face identifiers, measured values, file paths, and screenshots when a request needs one. Screenshots are written to your disk and passed to your AI. | Does not receive it |
| CAD operations | From the desktop agent to the CAD add-in on the same PC, over a local connection that only accepts requests carrying a key kept in your Windows profile. The operation, its arguments and its result stay on the PC. | Does not receive them (version 1.3.0 and later) |
| Chat history | A folder in your Windows profile. | Does not receive it |
| Token counts and usage | A file on your PC. The desktop agent reports no usage to us. | Does not receive it |
| Your AI key | Stored encrypted for your Windows account on your PC. | Does not receive it |
| Memory | SphereHarness keeps no memory of your conversations on its servers. A coding agent may keep its own, on your PC or with its provider. | Does not receive it |
| Macros, skills, variation templates and automations | Folders on your PC. To share, you export a pack file and send it yourself, or your organisation switches on sharing through its library on our server (off by default). | Only if your organisation switches sharing on |
| Documents you index for search | An index service on your PC, by default, or your organisation's own index service, signed in with your Windows login, Microsoft Entra ID or a key kept encrypted on your PC. If your organisation sets the index in our portal, our server tells your agent its address and sign-in kind, and nothing else. | Does not receive them |
| Telegram, and WhatsApp paired by QR code | Between the messaging service and the desktop agent on your PC, or your organisation's own server: your own Telegram bot, or WhatsApp paired as a linked device. | Does not receive them |
What does reach SphereHarness
Our server handles accounts, licences, downloads and updates, the help site, the support requests you send, and the community forum, content catalogue and marketplace when you use them. These are the calls it receives:
| What | When and what it carries | Your content in it |
|---|---|---|
| Sign-in and registration | When you sign in, register, ask for an email code or accept the terms: your email address, password or code, your name when you register, and a device id. A stale sign-in is refreshed with a token. On your PC the sign-in is stored encrypted for your Windows account, never in a settings file. | None |
| Licence check | At sign-in, then every 60 seconds, and at sign-out: a machine id and the computer's name, and a session id. | None; the computer name is sent |
| Account and subscription status | About every 30 seconds and every 5 minutes, with your sign-in token only. | None |
| Update check | At sign-in and then daily from the agent, and when a CAD add-in loads: the product name only, without your account. | None |
| Notifications | Every 60 seconds while you are signed in, to fetch replies to your support requests and announcements; marking one read. | None |
| Support requests and feedback | When you (or the AI, at your request) open a support request, reply on one, or send feedback: the subject and text you write and the files you attach, for example a diagnostics ZIP with logs. | What you write and attach |
| Microsoft Teams messages (the SphereHarness Teams app) | Only if you use the SphereHarness Teams app (desktop agent version 1.3.5 or later): Microsoft delivers each message to our server, which passes it to the desktop agent on your PC and passes the answer back. your messages to the SphereHarness Teams app are relayed through SphereHarness to your own PC, and the answers back; they are never stored — no message, answer, picture or file is written to our database, our disk or our logs. We keep only the link between your Teams account and your SphereHarness account. A small picture travels inside the Teams message; a larger one, or a file, waits in memory for at most one hour. | Relays them to your PC; stores none of them |
| WhatsApp through your own Twilio number | Only if you relay your own Twilio number: Twilio calls the SphereHarness address the agent gave you, and our server passes the request unchanged, with Twilio's signature, to your PC or your organisation's server, which checks it with your own auth token and answers Twilio directly. Nothing is stored; we never hold your auth token or keep a phone number. If your PC is not connected, our server answers with one fixed sentence that says so (the exact words). | Passes them to your PC; stores none of them |
| Community forum and marketplace | Only if you use them: the topics, replies and reports you post in the forum, and the packages you submit to the marketplace, with the public name you chose. Every post and every package version is approved by a moderator first, and then anyone can read it. Unlike Teams and WhatsApp messages, these are stored; when your account is deleted you choose whether your approved posts stay, shown as written by “deleted user”, or go with it (the details). | What you post or submit; stored, public once approved |
| Content catalogue | Only if you use it: the desktop agent asks which knowledge and skill packages you may install, downloads the one you choose (signed by our server, checked on your PC), and once a day asks whether the packages you installed have updates, sending their names and versions. We record which versions you installed. | None; the package list and versions you installed |
| Website forms | Sign-up, sign-in, password reset, contact and the community forms are checked by Cloudflare Turnstile. Wrong passwords and form requests are counted per hashed e-mail address and per IP address for two days, to stop guessing and spam. | What you type into the form |
| Business-system connections | Never. Connections to your databases, ERP, CRM and e-mail are kept in your company's own store (beside your document index, or on your PC) and run from the PC directly to that system. Their definitions, secrets, queries and answers do not reach us. | None |
| Connection admin check (optional) | Only if your company server lets SphereHarness organisation admins edit connections: when an admin opens the connections window, the agent asks our server for a short-lived signed statement that you are an organisation admin. The request carries only your sign-in; nothing about your company server or its connections. | None |
Who else processes what
- Your AI provider receives your prompts and the CAD context it needs to answer, under your agreement with it. What it keeps, logs or trains on is set by that agreement. With a coding agent, the agent runs on your PC and talks to its own provider.
- Microsoft (Teams, the Bot Framework, Entra ID) handles your Teams messages as for any Teams app, under your organisation's Microsoft agreement, and carries them between Teams and our server.
- Cloudflare checks our website forms with Turnstile: it receives your IP address and technical details of your browser, not what you type into the form (the details). It also stores support attachments and content packages for us in the EU.
- Everyone can read community posts and marketplace packages once a moderator has approved them.
- Twilio (and Meta, for WhatsApp) handles your WhatsApp messages under your own agreement with Twilio; your Twilio account and auth token stay yours.
- Your CAD vendor: anything your CAD system sends to its vendor (telemetry, licence checks, cloud services) is between you and that vendor. SphereHarness does not add to it.
Data stored before 24 September 2026
Until 24 September 2026, SphereHarness also offered an AI that ran on our servers. Conversations that ran on it were stored on our servers, and a few users stored an AI key with us. Nothing is added to those records any more. You can ask for yours to be deleted at any time; the privacy policy says how, and how long they are kept otherwise.
How we check it
An automated test runs chat turns with your own AI key and with a coding agent, including CAD operations over the real local connection into the add-in's code (only the CAD system itself is simulated), with a stand-in for our server listening. The test fails if a single request reaches that stand-in. A second test switches the old server-hosted AI back on and confirms the stand-in then sees the traffic, so the first test cannot pass by accident.
Turning on Microsoft Teams or the WhatsApp relay in the desktop agent opens a connection from your PC to our server that carries only those channels' messages; a chat typed on your PC still sends nothing to our server. Before a release, a relayed test message carrying a random marker is searched for in our server's logs, database and web-server files, and must not be found.
The full rules are in the privacy policy, section 11. Teams setup: Microsoft Teams: the SphereHarness app. WhatsApp: WhatsApp. Choosing your AI: The desktop agent.
Try it on your own parts
Start a trial with your own AI key or coding agent, or talk to us about seats for your team.