How Wrengle works

Beta

Your notes are files in a folder you choose. Wrengle opens that folder, reads the files, and writes them back as you work. Nothing is uploaded to open a note, search it, or edit it.

That folder is your vault, and the notes in it are ordinary Markdown files. You can move the folder, copy it, back it up, or open the same files in a different editor. Wrengle is not the only way to reach your own writing.

What stays on your machine

Your notes, as Markdown files in your vault.
Chart documents, which are also files in your vault.
Meeting transcripts and the meeting notes built from them.
Local AI models you download.
The search index Wrengle builds from your notes.
Your provider keys and connected-account tokens, held in the operating-system keychain — not in vault files, not in app settings, and not in any stored app state.

Wrengle also keeps working data of its own, in two places. Some of it sits inside your vault in an .app folder beside your notes: recent-edit recovery, per-note metadata, and temporary meeting recovery records. The rest sits in a private folder outside the vault. That includes the search index, which holds derived copies of your note text — so some of your writing does exist outside the vault folder, on the same machine. You can delete it, and Wrengle rebuilds it from your notes.

Back up the whole vault folder, not only the notes. The .app folder beside them holds recovery state that copying individual notes leaves behind. Those records can contain completed transcript text, so whatever you point at the vault folder — a backup drive, a sync service — receives them too. See Your vault and backups.

What crosses the network

Wrengle has no sync server. Your vault is never copied to one, and no account holds your notes. Opening, editing, searching, and organizing them all work with the network off.

What does reach the network is tied to a feature you start, and it carries only what that feature needs. One kind of plugin escapes that rule, and What plugins can reach below says which.

You do this	What leaves your machine	Who receives it
Use a cloud AI model	The request text — your prompt plus the note context that command needs	The provider whose key you added
Use cloud dictation	Your microphone audio, while voice input is active	The speech provider you chose
Use cloud voice analysis	The transcribed text, the active note title, up to 40 folder paths, up to 15 recent note paths, and — for cleanup — the previous dictated sentence — never your microphone audio	The analysis provider you chose
Turn on cloud meeting transcription	The meeting audio, for one explicit final pass	The speech provider you chose
Connect an app such as Gmail	The exact request you approved — for a Gmail draft, the recipient, subject, and body you were shown	That service
Grant a plugin network access	Whatever that plugin action sends	Only the hosts its manifest declared and you granted
Download a local model	The download request	The model host
Sign in to a Wrengle account	Your sign-in details	Wrengle's account service

An account is optional and never touches your vault. You can download Wrengle and use it signed out. Signing in adds identity across the website and the desktop status bar. Deleting your account removes your profile from Wrengle's servers, and it does not read, upload, change, or delete anything in your vault. See Accounts and sign-in.

Two things run without you starting them:

Update checks. Wrengle contacts the public downloads location to see whether a newer version exists.
Privacy-minimized usage data. This is on by default. It sends coarse event names and content-free details such as app version, operating system, action IDs, redacted error kinds, and meeting diagnostics. It never sends note text, transcript text, audio, or prompts. Turn it off under Settings → Privacy & Data.

This website is separate from the app. Its optional analytics stay off until you accept them, and Privacy choices in the footer changes that at any time.

Local-first describes where your notes live, not where every feature runs. A cloud model is a cloud model: the provider's own logging, retention, and billing policies apply to everything you send it. AI and privacy has the detail — which routes are local, what each one sends, and how the automatic setting picks a provider.

What plugins can reach

Plugins run as WASM in a sandbox and start with nothing. A plugin's manifest lists the capabilities it may ask for. That list is a request, not a grant. Wrengle does not hand over an API because the manifest names it; you grant or deny each capability yourself, and the decision applies to that one installation.

A plugin also cannot write to a note directly. When it wants to change one, it creates a proposal, and the editor shows you the change first. Nothing reaches your vault until you approve it.

The sandbox covers plugin actions, not every kind of plugin. A plugin action reaches the network only through Wrengle, and only the hosts you granted. A plugin view that you install by hand is different: its code can reach the network directly, and the host list you granted does not apply to it. Views built in Wrengle's own plugin builder are checked to stay offline; a hand-installed one is only as trustworthy as where you got it. See What plugins are.

External AI agents are a different boundary. An agent you launch, such as a coding assistant you run from the command line, is a program on your computer rather than a sandboxed plugin. Wrengle's own tools keep it scoped to your vault and route its writes through the same approval step. The process itself still holds the ordinary permissions of the command you launched, including outside your vault. See AI agents.

Where to go next

Getting started — choose a folder and write your first note.
Your vault and backups — what lives where, and what a backup has to include.
AI and privacy — the data boundary for every AI feature.
Known limitations — what this release does not do yet.