VALENCEPrivacy & Licensing ← back to Valence
// Plain language, no fine-print games

Valence never phones home.

The whole promise in one line: Valence never collects or sends your data anywhere on its own — ever. The only way anything leaves your computer is if you choose to send it. Here's exactly how that works.

01

What Valence does on its own

Nothing. No telemetry. No analytics. No background uploads. No account to create. Valence doesn't track how you use it, what you ask, or who you are.

Your conversations, your memory, and your settings live on your computer as ordinary files you can open, read, back up, or delete. If your machine is offline, Valence still works — because it was never reaching out in the first place.

Even your license key never phones home.

Your key is verified by cryptography built into Valence itself — there's no activation call, no server check, nothing to ping. The math proves the key is valid, right on your machine. You could buy Valence, unplug the network, and activate it on a computer that never touches the internet again.

02

The only times anything leaves — and you're the one doing it

Checking for an update Optional, and you click it. Valence asks our site one question — "is there a newer version?" — and if there is, it asks whether you'd like to download it. Nothing about you is sent; it's just a version check.
Downloading a local model The model comes straight from Hugging Face, not from us. We never see it happen. No usage data, no chats, no patterns reach Helix — ever.
Using a cloud model Optional. If you connect ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or another provider with your own key, your prompts go directly to that provider, on your account — a call you make. Each provider has its own privacy policy; read theirs. Helix is never in the middle.
Importing old chats Your move, start to finish. Connect an account and pull your history out, or export it and load the file by hand. Either way it lands on your device. Helix never sees a word of it.
03

Tools & abilities — off until you say so

Valence can run tools (MCP) and abilities that reach the web, touch your files, or run code. That's powerful — and it's exactly the kind of thing that should never be on without your say-so.

Off by default Every tool ships switched off. Nothing reaches anywhere, touches a file, or runs until you turn it on. No surprises, no quiet background actions.
Yours to see and revoke You can see what each tool can reach and switch it back off anytime. Your choice, start to finish — and whatever a tool does, it does on your machine, not ours.
04

Your files & the diagnostic log

Honest both ways: your chats and memory are saved as plain files — which is why you can open, read, and delete them. It also means they aren't encrypted by Valence today. Keep them on an encrypted drive (Windows BitLocker and the like) and they're protected at rest. Built-in encryption is on the roadmap after v1. Your API keys are already stored encrypted.

The diagnostic log Valence keeps a small local log, just in case something breaks and you need help. It's circular (it can't balloon in size) and it auto-clears by day 14 — or you purge it by hand whenever you like.
It's yours to hand over — or not That log never leaves your machine unless you send it to me. I can't reach in and pull it — by design. If you want help, you deliver it; otherwise I never see it.
05

What Helix receives

From the app itself, nothing — no chats, no usage, no patterns. There are exactly three ways I ever end up with anything, and all three are you reaching out, not the app reporting in:

When you buy Stripe runs the checkout — they handle your card and take your name, email and country to complete the sale and tax. I never see or store your card. Stripe is a payment company, not a data broker; their terms cover that step.
When you email me Your message lands in Microsoft Office 365 — enterprise email, protected by Microsoft's security. I keep it long enough to help you, and I'm the only one reading it.
When you visit the site I see hit counts — how many people landed on a page — and that's it. No cookies following you around, no profile, no pixels, no ad networks.

No servers in the loop. Nothing to leak.

There's no Helix account, no Helix cloud, no Helix database of your activity. The privacy isn't a policy I promise to follow — it's how the app is built. If you never buy, email, or visit, I have nothing about you at all.

06

Kids Mode, children & COPPA

Nearly every major cloud provider disallows users under 18 under COPPA. So Kids Mode is deliberate about this:

Local models only Kids Mode runs on on-device models only — no frontier or cloud models, no exceptions.
Why that matters Because the model is local, the child's data never leaves your machine — your own computer does all the work. When nothing is collected or transmitted, COPPA's data-collection concerns don't apply the way they do to cloud AI.
Parents hold the record Everything Kids Mode keeps so you can review it lives on the device, under your control. Review or delete any of it, anytime — and it never leaves the machine.
Adults & frontier models Grown-ups who want frontier models privately can use pay-as-you-go endpoints like Google Vertex AI, which don't train on your data. Those are not available inside Kids Mode.
07

An honest word on kids' safety

Let's be straight: no guardrail is unbreakable — anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. Here's what we will say plainly:

Valence's Kids Mode meaningfully raises the floor. Its safeguards significantly increase how safely a child can use AI, and the controls it puts in a parent's hands go well beyond what you'll find almost anywhere else. Nothing is hidden, and nothing is hard to find — you see everything your child does, and every lever is right there for you.

08

Licensing — the whole deal

Try it 7 days, free

The entire app, no limits, no card, no account. Use everything before you decide.

Buy it $59.95, once

You get a key. It's yours forever — no subscriptions, no renewals, no extra fees.

Refunds None — here's why

Your key is cryptographic and permanently yours — I genuinely can't revoke it or stop you using it. A refund would mean you keep the working software and get your money back. That's why the 7-day free trial is your test drive: buy only when you're sure.

Platform Windows desktop

A desktop application for Windows. It runs on your machine, and works fully offline.

Because I can't take back what you permanently own, I won't sell through marketplaces that force refunds I can't honor — not stubbornness, just fairness to a solo developer. Helix AI Labs is a registered LLC in the United States.

Last updated: June 2026 · Questions? help@helixailabs.com