Introduction to Agency

Agency is a local-first, zero-knowledge knowledge base that enables secure, private exploration, search, and chat across your documents and media.

What is Agency?

Agency is designed to give you complete control over your data while providing powerful AI-assisted search and analysis capabilities. Unlike cloud-based solutions, Agency:

• Works entirely offline — no internet connection required
• Keeps your data private — nothing leaves your device
• Supports rich formats — PDFs; Office/ODF docs; spreadsheets; presentations; text/markup/code; images with OCR; emails + PST/mbox; calendars; EPUB; archives; and more (kept in sync with backend/ingestion/processing.py)
• Uses local AI models — for search, chat, and analysis

Key Principles

Zero-Knowledge Architecture

Agency implements a true zero-knowledge architecture where:

1. All processing happens locally on your device
2. No plaintext data is ever transmitted
3. Optional cloud sync uses end-to-end encryption
4. You control your encryption keys

Local-First Design

Agency prioritizes local operation:

• Full functionality without internet
• Instant access to your knowledge base
• No subscription fees for core features
• Complete data portability