What Jarvis sees
A straight answer to the question the permission dialog raises and does not answer: what does this thing look at, and where does it go? Written from the source code, in the order you would ask it.
1. The screen
When a picture is taken
Only when you ask something about your screen. The app decides that from your words — “what do I press here”, “why is this not working”, “what is on the screen”. A question that does not need the screen never takes a picture, and neither does sitting idle. There is no continuous capture: the app has a unit test whose entire purpose is to fail if one is ever added.
What is in the picture
One frame: the window of the app you were last in, or the display under your pointer. Not every window, not every display, and not a moment other than the one you asked about.
Does it leave your Mac
Yes. Reading a screen takes a model, and the model does not run on your Mac. The picture travels over an encrypted connection to FG, and from FG to the specialist provider whose model reads it. It exists in memory for the few seconds the answer takes: it is not written to disk on your Mac or on ours, and it is not stored in any database.
The app talks to exactly one address — fg-platform.com. It never contacts a model provider directly, and no provider credential is ever present on your Mac.
2. The text map of the screen
Along with the picture, the app sends a short text map it builds on your Mac: words it reads off the image, and the names of buttons and fields as macOS reports them. It is what lets the answer say “the blue button on the left” instead of guessing.
Before that map is sent, anything that looks like a password, a secret, an API key or a token is removed from it, along with any single value long enough to be a key.
3. The microphone
Open only while a voice conversation is running, and closed the moment you hang up. Nothing is listened to between conversations.
What you say is recorded to a temporary file on your Mac, sent to FG and on to the specialist provider that turns speech into text, and the temporary file is deleted immediately afterwards. The audio is not stored — not by us, and not on your Mac.
The very first short line you hear back — “one moment”, “let me look” — is chosen from a draft recognised entirely on your Mac, by macOS, before anything is sent anywhere.
4. What is stored, and for how long
| What | Where it ends up | How long |
|---|---|---|
| The screenshot | Nowhere. Memory only, for the length of one answer | Seconds |
| The text map of the screen | Nowhere | Seconds |
| Your voice | Nowhere | Seconds |
| Your question and the answer, as text | The conversation log of your own account, which you can read in your console | Until you delete it — no automatic expiry is switched on today |
| Metering: number of requests, seconds of speech, cost | Our billing records | Kept for accounting. No content, only counts |
| The text of a question that failed | Our error log, so the fault can be diagnosed | Until the fault is resolved and cleared |
| The key that connects the app to your account | Your Mac’s Keychain | Until you disconnect it |
5. Who can see it
- You. Every desktop conversation appears in the Conversations tab of your own console, and you can delete any of them there.
- We — only to investigate a fault you have reported or an incident we have detected.
- The specialist providers we contract with, each seeing only the part it needs to do its job, and only for as long as the request takes. They are named in the Privacy Policy and bound by our Data Processing Addendum.
6. What the app does not do
- It does not record your screen. Not in the background, not while you talk, not at all.
- It does not read your keystrokes and does not click anything for you. The Accessibility permission, if you grant it, is used to read labels — never to act.
- It does not send analytics, telemetry or a profile of your machine anywhere.
- It does not contact anyone but
fg-platform.com. - It does not hold a key to any model provider. Those stay on our servers.
7. Turning things off
In your console, under Widget Agent, each ability is a switch: taking a screenshot, understanding the interface, reading the page you have open, suggesting the next step, describing a person on screen, talking out loud. Switch one off and the app stops doing it — the refusal comes from our side, so it applies immediately and to every Mac you have connected.
Screen access, the microphone and Accessibility are also macOS permissions, and you can withdraw any of them at any time in System Settings → Privacy & Security. The app keeps working with what is left.
macOS asks you to confirm screen access again about once a month. That is macOS, not us — every app that can look at a screen gets the same reminder, and it cannot be switched off by us or by you.
8. Deleting
Delete any conversation in the Conversations tab of your console. To have everything associated with your account erased, write to privacy@fg-platform.com. Disconnecting the Mac removes the key from its Keychain and stops that machine from reaching your agent.