Contents Control
Your data stays on your machine unless you send it somewhere. When it does move, Bench shows you the receipt.
Research data carries obligations that ordinary software does not have to think about: consent terms, embargoes, IRB conditions, industrial agreements, an unpublished result that must not leak. A tool that is vague about where data goes is not usable under those conditions, however good it is.
So Bench is explicit. Disk is the source of truth. The cloud is opt-in per job and per project. And for work that cannot leave the building at all, Privacy Mode turns the guarantee into something enforced and inspectable rather than promised.
Your projects are folders on your disk. Uninstall Bench and you still have everything.
There is no app-private database holding your record hostage. Projects are directories, documents are markdown, notes are markdown, to-dos are markdown, code is code. The metadata Bench keeps sits in a hidden folder next to the project and is plain text too.
This is a deliberate constraint on the product, not a happy accident. It means the record outlives the vendor.
Either the edit is staged in your buffer, or a banner asks you to accept it.
An AI edit in the editor is a buffer change that one Cmd+Z reverts, and it reaches disk only when you save. An edit made to a file on disk raises the amber File changed on disk banner with Accept or Keep mine.
Agent results are written strictly inside your project folders, and opening a file from the Activity board is confined to your workspace. The agent cannot wander off into the rest of your machine.
Lock a project to your machine — enforced at the tool level, not promised in a settings page.
People ask
A shield toggle in the project header. With it on, ARC keeps working with your local files, but everything that would move data off your machine is switched off and refuses with a clear reason: web access, literature and database lookups, compound lookups, cloud jobs, data ingest, cloud sync.
The only network traffic that remains is the model call itself, through Heureka's no-retention proxy — nothing to third parties, no web, no cloud. Scheduled and background tasks in a private project follow exactly the same rules, which is the case that actually matters: the guarantee holds while you are asleep.
Cloud buttons and tabs grey out with an explanation rather than failing after the fact, so you find out before you commit to something, not after.
A live log of every network action while Privacy Mode is on.
The chat shows each model call through the proxy and every blocked attempt with its reason, as it happens. Each run appends a plain summary — counts and reasons, nothing sensitive — to a log inside the project that opens with one click.
It is the difference between a vendor telling you data stayed put and being able to show your IRB, your legal team or your industrial partner what actually happened.
The defaults are the private ones.
Feed recommendations do not default to on. Notes sync metadata only — titles, tags and link structure — rather than the content of your notes. Everything that leaves your machine is gathered on one Privacy page instead of scattered through settings, so you can audit it in one sitting.
Real backups: encrypted on your machine, restorable, and unreadable by us.
People ask
Back up a single project or your whole workspace. The archive is encrypted before it leaves your machine and the key never does — the server logs that an upload happened and stores ciphertext it cannot open.
Restore brings a project back onto disk. A feed nudge reminds you when a backup is overdue.
Four tabs: System, Privacy, Templates, ARC.
Grouped by intent rather than mirroring the navigation bar. System covers the app itself and updates, Privacy everything that leaves your machine, Templates your house formats, ARC the agent's skills and sub-agents.
See what you have used, in the app, without doing arithmetic.
A usage view showing your consumption and what remains, so cost is visible while you work rather than a surprise at the end of the month.
Choose your channel, and install when it suits you.
Bench updates itself on the channel you pick — the stable release, or the beta channel if you want features early. When a new version is waiting you get a dot in the header and in Settings, and a Restart & install button: deferring an update no longer means quitting the app to get it.
Occasionally a version is required, and Bench will say so plainly rather than degrading quietly.
Signed on both, and it survives your institution's network.
Bench runs on macOS and Windows. The Windows app and installer are signed as Heureka Labs, Inc., so Windows names the publisher during installation instead of showing a blank "Unknown publisher".
Enterprise and university networks that inject their own certificates are handled — Bench finds the institution's certificates and passes them through, so the app works on a managed laptop without IT intervention.
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