Your notes
Your files, and what Graphite sends.
Your notebook is a folder of files you keep. Here is everything Graphite sends anywhere, when it sends it, and what it counts.
Yours
Your notebook is a folder of files.
In the Mac app, every note — the folders and projects you make too, each a note of its own — and every receipt is a markdown file on your Mac, with a receipt’s photo or PDF beside it, unchanged. Open them in Obsidian, in any editor, in Finder — Graphite notices when something changes outside it and picks the change up. New notebook… makes another beside it, and Open folder as notebook… opens any folder of markdown — an Obsidian vault, say — as it is.
In a browser, the same notes are kept by that browser on that device: Keep a copy, in Settings › Notebook, saves them as markdown files in a .zip, or into a folder in Chrome, Edge and Arc.
Links are [[wikilinks]], and which project or folder a note is in is one line of plain frontmatter. Delete the app and you keep everything, exactly as it was.
Why does attention matter.md
--- kind: project topic: "[[Machine learning]]" created: 2026-10-25 --- An article for people who use chatbots every day but have never read the paper: what attention does, in plain words, and why it makes long inputs expensive. It's done when it's published.
What's sent
What Graphite writes, and what it sends.
What Graphite writes is labelled.
What the Guide writes says so. A draft it arranged and the questions it asked are labelled Arranged by Graphite and Asked by Graphite, an answer or a research brief you keep with Add to note is the Guide's own block, marked with the Graphite mark, and a summary you accept is Graphite's own block, titled Summary. An edit it suggests is yours only once you accept it. You always know which words are yours.
Teaching is marked against your notes.
When you explain something back, Graphite marks it against what your notes say — not against whatever it happens to know.
Your key, and where it goes.
Your key goes only to the provider you chose, and you pay that provider for what you use, at their prices.
In the Mac app, your key is kept in your Mac's Keychain — or, if you turn that off in Settings, in Graphite's own file on your Mac, unencrypted — and a request goes from the app's own server, running on your Mac, straight to your provider.
In the browser, your key is kept in that browser and sent with each request, along with the notes it's about, through Graphite's server to your provider. The server passes them on and stores neither.
Nothing of yours is sent until you say so.
Asking Graphite about a note — or for what's missing, an outline, a draft, a summary, an edit or research — sends that note, the notes it links to and what you typed to your AI provider, only when you ask; asked about words you selected, it sends those words too, and asked in the Guide about notes you selected together, it sends those notes. On a project's or a folder's page it sends that page and the notes in it, up to twelve, and the Guide says how many under its box.
Asked to tidy notes — on the Inbox, All notes, a project's or a folder's page, or notes you selected — the Graphite button's card sends each note's title, where it's filed, its tags, its length and its first lines, for up to 300 notes, with the names of your folders and projects and what you typed, to your AI provider, only when you ask; on a project's or a folder's page it sends that page too, and the card says what it sends under its box. Organizing one note sends that note and the names of your folders, projects and most used tags, and nothing of your other notes. Finding notes written twice or empty, and merging notes, happen on your device and send nothing.
Asking your notebook sends your question and the notes that match it, found on your device, to your AI provider — only when you ask, and the answer shows what was sent. A question about money also sends a line for each receipt it may be about (merchant, date, currency, category, work or personal — never a total), and Graphite adds up the total on your device; on OpenRouter, it goes only to providers that keep nothing. A question no note or receipt matches sends nothing.
Filing is off until you turn on File my Inbox in Settings → AI, in each notebook. Then Graphite files that notebook's Inbox on its own: it sends each Inbox note's title and first lines, with the names of your projects and folders, to your AI provider — the notes waiting when you turn it on, then each new one a few seconds after you write it, and any waiting when you open the notebook. A note it leaves in the Inbox isn't sent again unless you change it, an answer you saved from asking your notebook isn't sent at all, and with a key for another provider filing stays off until you turn it on again.
Reading receipts takes a yes of its own in each notebook. After it, Graphite sends each photo or PDF waiting in that notebook's Inbox to your AI provider with your key — a photo as a smaller JPEG copy without its location, a PDF as it is — and writes what it reads next to the original, in your notebook. Graphite's server keeps none of it; on OpenRouter, receipts go only to providers that keep nothing.
Graphite logs which action ran, how long it took and the kind of any error — never a note, a question or a key.
The site and the notebook in a browser count visits with Vercel Web Analytics — the page, the site you came from, your country, and your browser, system and kind of device — with no cookies, and never what you write. They also count each Mac download, and in the notebook each note made and each request Graphite answers — by its kind, never by its title or words. The Mac app counts nothing.