Data & privacy · 11 October 2026
Your projects.
Your destinations.
ProjectVault is a native macOS tool. You choose the folders it reads, the repositories it pushes to, and the place it saves ZIP snapshots.
What stays on your Mac
ProjectVault stores its settings and bounded action history in your Mac’s Application Support folder. Optional API tokens are stored in macOS Keychain. SSH transport uses your Mac’s SSH setup. Discovery and local review do not themselves enable uploads.
What goes to GitHub
After you explicitly enable backups for a project and branch, manual or scheduled jobs send included repository content and Git history to your selected GitHub repository. An optional separate scheduled backup branch stores snapshots without changing your working checkout or staging area. Git commits also contain commit messages and author metadata. Repository visibility determines who can see the uploaded content.
Ignore rules, exclusions and content checks control what is included. Existing tracked files and earlier commits may still contain excluded information. Exclusions do not remove past versions from Git history. Checks for secrets and identifying metadata are heuristic; review sensitive material yourself before enabling uploads.
Personal-metadata review
Settings → Privacy provides a global policy, with per-project overrides in Backup Vault. The visibility-based policy warns for private destinations and requires approval for public or unknown ones. You can also explicitly choose warning or approval modes. Credential findings always block regardless of that setting.
Checks run locally and examine current files, outgoing history and commit metadata. They can identify certain local paths, signing details, settings exports and folder-access bookmarks. Image pixels are not inspected. Findings record paths, reasons and line numbers where available rather than copying detected secret values.
Explicit approvals are scoped to the exact file contents, path, detector version, destination and visibility. Policy changes apply when a task starts. These checks cannot guarantee that all sensitive information will be found.
What goes into ZIP backups
Both project ZIPs and whole-connected-folder ZIPs include the entire selected folder, including hidden files, ignored files, secrets, caches and nested projects. ZIPs are not encrypted. If the destination is in iCloud Drive or another synced folder, that provider may upload the archive according to its settings. ProjectVault’s ZIP verification does not confirm that cloud sync has finished.
Optional local-model messages
If enabled, commit-message suggestions use an OpenAI-compatible loopback endpoint on your Mac. You can preview the reviewed excerpt before requesting a suggestion. Up to eight small text files contribute at most 6 KB of relative paths and diff excerpts. Recognized secrets, flagged files, exclusions, binaries and large files are omitted.
ProjectVault does not provide that model server or give it tools or credentials. Your server’s own configuration determines any further processing. You can leave the feature off; ordinary backups do not require a model.
Retention and removal
At most 100 action records per project are retained locally. ZIP snapshots remain in the destination until you delete them. Disconnecting ZIP backups removes the rule, not existing files. GitHub content and history remain until you manage them through GitHub and your Git tools. Deleting local app settings does not delete either backup destination.
This product page and support
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When you email for support, the information you choose to send is handled through email to respond to your request. Please avoid sending credentials or private project contents. For questions, contact index-hearty6c@icloud.com.