RillPrivacy Policy
In plain English. Rill is operated by Lukens Holdings, LLC (lukensholdings.com). We let you choose how much AI does and how much our server can see. Here’s what we collect, what each level actually means, and what we never do.
What we collect, and why
- Your account: your email address and name, to sign you in and write to you about your account.
- What you capture: notes, voice, photos, documents and everything else you put in Rill, to keep it, find it again and, at the level you choose below, have AI help you with it.
- Connections you turn on: calendar, email or other accounts you link, read only to do what you ask.
- Your phone number and texts, if you text Rill, and calls to a Rill number, if you have one. See Text messages and phone calls, below.
- Crashes: see When the app crashes, below.
The honest tradeoff
AI search and end-to-end encryption are fundamentally in tension. For our server to find a capture by meaning, it has to read the capture. For our server to be unable to read your captures, it can't run AI on them either. There's no way around that. So we let you choose.
You can change your mode any time. Switching does not retroactively change older captures — silently re-processing your history would itself be a trust violation. New captures use the new rules.
The four levels
Pick the one that matches how much you want AI to do — and how much you want our server to know.
1. Full AI
AvailableSmartest recall. Server reads everything (briefly, in memory) to help you find it later.
What our server sees
- Your voice transcripts, photo descriptions, document text, and notes — in plaintext, while the AI runs.
- Stores everything encrypted at rest after processing.
What we do
- Transcribes voice with Whisper, then cleans up filler words and adds punctuation.
- Describes photos with a vision model so they’re searchable.
- Classifies each capture (idea, decision, task, etc.) for smart organization.
- Embeds the meaning into a vector so you can recall by intent, not just keywords.
What we don’t do
- Train on your data. Ever.
2. Preserve
AvailableAI helps you find things — but never rewrites what you said.
What our server sees
- Same as Full AI: plaintext while AI runs, encrypted at rest after.
What we do
- Still transcribes voice with Whisper, classifies, and embeds for semantic search.
- For images, your typed note is the document. The AI’s photo description is stored as separate metadata, not merged in.
- For documents, stores the original text verbatim. AI is only used to add tags.
What we don’t do
- Run voice-cleanup. Your transcript is the raw Whisper output, filler words and all.
- Modify the content of anything you capture.
3. Vault
AvailableRill’s AI answers, assistant and agents are off. What you capture is still processed so it can be kept and found.
What our server sees
- What you capture, as it is saved, so it can be stored and found again.
- Stored encrypted at rest on our servers, as at every level. This level is not end-to-end encrypted: our servers can decrypt what you capture. For notes our servers cannot read, use Vault notes, below.
What we do
- Transcribes voice, reads photos and documents, sorts each capture into a category and indexes it for search, as Preserve does.
- Lets you search and browse what you kept.
What we don’t do
- Write answers, summaries or replies from your captures.
- Run agents or the assistant (in the app, by text or by phone) on your account.
- Build a profile of your interests or habits from your captures.
- Run voice cleanup or rewrite anything you captured.
4. Local-Only
Not offered yetPlanned: nothing leaves your device. Not offered yet on any platform.
What our server sees
- Nothing. No upload would happen.
What we do
- Would store everything on your device only.
- Would transcribe voice on-device with Apple’s built-in speech recognition.
- Would search locally, by keyword.
What we don’t do
- Sync between your devices.
- Back up to anything you don’t configure yourself.
- Use any cloud AI.
Vault notes: encrypted on your device
Separate from the privacy levels above, the Vault page (on paid plans, on the web and in the iPhone app) keeps notes that our servers cannot read.
- What is encrypted: the text (and any file) you seal in the Vault.
- How: with AES-256-GCM, using a key made from your passphrase with PBKDF2-SHA256 (300,000 rounds) and a random salt.
- Where: in your browser or the iPhone app, before anything is uploaded. Your passphrase is never sent to us. The iPhone app keeps it in that device’s Keychain so you need not retype it; the web keeps it only while the tab is open.
- What our servers store: the encrypted note, the salt and nonce needed to decrypt it, and when it was saved. On the web, your browser also works out a search vector (a list of numbers that stands for the note’s meaning) so Vault search can work. That vector is not encrypted: it does not contain your words, but it can say something about the topic.
- What that means: no AI reads Vault notes, and we cannot read or recover them. Forget the passphrase and they are gone. The encryption runs in code Rill provides to your browser and app.
See exactly what touched this
Every AI step on every capture is logged. When you find a result in recall, you can open What touched this? to see exactly which models ran, when, and how long they took. If it isn’t in the log, it didn’t happen.
A few things that don’t change with the level
- We never train on your data, in any mode, ever.
- We never sell, share, or rent your captures.
- You can export everything you’ve captured at any time.
- You can delete your account and all data, permanently, at any time.
How your data is encrypted, what Rill’s assistant can and cannot see, and how it follows websites’ terms: Security.
The AI services Rill uses, and what they receive
- Anthropic and OpenAI: the text a request needs (your notes, transcripts and questions) to write answers, summaries and drafts. OpenAI also reads photos and documents you add.
- Groq, OpenAI and Deepgram: voice notes and meeting recordings, to turn them into text.
- Google, Tavily and SerpApi: search words only, when Rill looks something up on the web for you.
- ElevenLabs and Retell: if you use spoken briefs or Rill Phone, the words to be spoken and the call itself.
Only what a request needs is sent. In the iPhone and iPad app, Rill asks for your permission before any of it is sent. Texts and calls also pass through the services that deliver them (Twilio, Sendblue, WhatsApp).
Information from your Google account
Rill reaches your Google account only when you connect it, and only for what you connect:
- Google Calendar (read only): your calendars and their events, to show your day, prepare you for meetings, and remind you of what you have coming up. Rill cannot create, change or delete anything in your Google Calendar.
- Google Drive: only the files you choose in Google’s own file picker, and files Rill creates for you. Rill cannot see the rest of your Drive.
- Your Google email address, to label the connection so you can tell your accounts apart.
Gmail is connected separately, with an app password you create in your Google account, not through Google’s sign-in. Rill reads mail when you ask about it and does not store it.
We use information from Google only to provide the features you see in Rill. We do not sell it, use it for advertising, or use it to decide anyone’s credit or lending. We share it only with the services that process it for us to answer your request (the AI services named above), when the law requires it, or to keep Rill secure. No person at Rill reads it unless you ask us to, or unless security or the law requires it. It is not used to develop, improve or train generalized AI or machine-learning models, and the AI services that process it for us do so under terms that do not allow them to train on it.
What Rill keeps from Google is encrypted at rest. Disconnecting in Settings, Connected accounts stops all access at once, and you can also remove Rill at myaccount.google.com/permissions. Deleting your account deletes everything Rill holds, including what came from Google.
Rill’s use and transfer to any other app of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.
When the app crashes
If Rill crashes, we receive the crash itself — where in our code it happened, which build you were on, and your OS version. Not your captures, not your transcripts, not your name or email. We turned this on by default because the alternative is that the first person a bug hits tells us nothing, and it keeps happening to everyone after them.
Everything beyond a crash — how long slow operations took, the context around errors we already handled — waits for you to turn on Help improve Rill in Settings → Privacy. Session replay is off, and will stay off unless we tell you otherwise here first: recording your screen in an app that holds your memory is not something to switch on quietly.
Text messages and phone calls
If you link your mobile number to text Rill, we keep the number to know the texts are yours, and keep the texts themselves for 30 days so a conversation can continue. We use them only to answer you and to do what you ask. If you have a Rill phone number, calls to it are transcribed and the message is saved to your Rill account.
We do not sell or share your SMS opt-in data or personal information with third parties for marketing purposes. Texts and calls travel through the carriers and messaging providers that deliver them, only to deliver them.
Reply STOP to any Rill text to unlink your number. The terms for Rill text messages are in our Terms of Service.
Your memory, after you
You can designate what happens to your captured corpus when you’re gone — sealed, ask-only via your AI persona, or full export. It’s a framework for recording your wishes, not an automatic transfer. How Memory Donation works →