Security and privacy

Kovan is local-first. Your code stays in your checkouts; the server holds what the team needs to coordinate.

What stays on your machines

Source code. It is never stored on the Kovan server. Sync between teammates goes through your own Git remote with your own credentials.
Git credentials and SSH keys. Kovan uses the Git you already have configured and does not store them.
Folder paths. The link between a workspace and a folder on your disk is kept only on your computer.
Your provider key. It is stored in your operating system's keychain.

What the server stores

accounts, organizations, workspaces, members and roles,
sessions, plans, locks, comments, notes and activity,
snapshot metadata: commit, ref and time, never file contents,
transcript chunks of session lanes,
for managed usage: usage records and invoices.

Transcripts

What an agent says and does in a session lane is streamed to the server so that teammates can follow it. Before a chunk is stored:

secrets are redacted by pattern,
long output is trimmed, and
the chunk is encrypted.

Transcripts are kept for 90 days by default. An organization can change the period, and expired transcripts are deleted on a schedule.

Live keystroke-level writing events, which show an agent typing in a teammate's editor, are relayed but not saved.

Encryption

Transcript chunks and GitHub tokens are encrypted by the server before they are written to the database. The server holds the keys, which can be rotated. This is encryption at rest, not end-to-end encryption.

Sign-in sessions are random tokens. The server stores only a hash of each, and any of them can be revoked. The desktop app keeps its token in the operating system's encrypted store.

Models and your prompts

When an agent runs, your prompt and the code it reads are sent to the model provider you chose: through your own key, through managed usage, or through the CLI you connected. Overlap detection and task summaries may also send a short summary derived from your prompt to a small model.

Permissions

Agents start in Request mode. An approval authorizes one exact action once, and it is enforced on the machine that runs the action, not only in the interface. Roles are checked on the server for every request, and a demoted member's next action is refused.

File locks and worktrees keep work apart. They are advisory and are not security boundaries.

Error reports

Kovan can send error reports linked to your account to help fix failures. Prompts and code are not included. Turn this off in Settings → Privacy.

You can sign in with GitHub, Google or an email link. A verified email address joins those methods into one account.

Reporting a vulnerability

Email security@kovan.dev. The security page explains what to include and what happens next.