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Operate / v0.1

Data retention

What stays on the endpoint, what leaves and why, the bounds on each store, and how deletion works.

Reviewed September 27, 2026 · Current implementation

What stays on the endpoint

Raw collected data stays on the Mac, in a sealed local archive. So do the full results behind every answer and the local signed audit log. Recursift reasons where the data lives and forwards findings, not data.

What leaves, and why

What leavesWhy
Heartbeats: version, mode, uptime and a few countsPresence, and delivery of policy and questions
Profile: identity, addresses, settings, counters, posture checks and bounded inventoriesThe System tab and posture review
Compact summaries of escalated and hunt eventsThe Events tab
Signed findings with the few indicators needed for correlationThe Findings tab
Answers, at most 4,000 characters and no rowsThe conversation you asked for
Rows, only when you request the data for an answerYour explicit request, up to 200 rows per check
Detection and gold build resultsJobs and comparisons you started

If your organization selects remote inference for a question, the question, its conversation history and bounded evidence from the checks it ran are sent through the console to the model provider your organization configured. Local inference sends none of that.

Bounds on the endpoint

StoreInstalled defaultSetting
Local archive100,000 rows or 30 daysarchive_rows, archive_max_age_s
Findings waiting to send10,000 or 30 daysfindings_outbox_rows, findings_outbox_max_age_s
Events waiting to be processed10,000intake_pending_max
Question results24 hours or the newest 200 answered questions; up to 500 rows per checkFixed
Audit logRotates into signed segments at 128 MiBFixed

Settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/Recursift/native-config.json; restart the service after changing them. Whichever limit is reached first applies. Requesting data does not extend how long the endpoint keeps it.

How long the console keeps data

Events, findings, questions and answers, and detection results are kept until they are deleted. The console keeps only the latest profile and the latest heartbeat fields for each endpoint. Its pages show the newest 200 events, 50 findings and 50 questions. Finished gold build tasks older than 30 days are removed, with a record kept in the gold build audit. Query API jobs, findings and the customer audit chain do not expire.

Deletion

Deleting a conversation deletes its questions and answers. Revoking an endpoint stops its key and deletes nothing. On the Mac, the uninstall steps in Install an endpoint delete everything local. Deleted archive pages are overwritten by the database, but blocks the file system has not reused yet, and backups, can still hold older copies.

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