What leaves your device

Everything is measured on your device before anything is sent. The file you are protecting, and the text of a note, are never uploaded — there is no code path that accepts them. The text endpoint refuses a request that carries prose rather than quietly ignoring it, so a client that got this wrong fails loudly instead of appearing to work.

Your source work — the file, the prose — never leaves. It is read locally and measured locally.

The measurements do leave: a hash of the exact bytes, and one-way fingerprints that survive cropping, re-encoding, reformatting and rephrasing. These are short and irreversible. They are not anonymous, though, and it is worth being precise about that: a fingerprint can be compared against a file someone already holds, and confirm a match. It cannot be turned back into your work.

The record is fully public: an asset identifier, when it was registered, and a signature made by your key. That is the part designed to be read by anyone, because it is what settles the question of who registered what, and when.

Public search does not return your identity. It returns a derived reference — a short value computed one-way from your identifier. Two results from the same creator carry the same reference, so a searcher can tell that work shares an owner, without learning whose.

This is a pseudonym rather than anonymity, and the distinction matters: someone who already holds your identifier can compute the reference themselves and confirm the match. What they cannot do is start from a search result and arrive at you.

You can check this. Run a search against the public endpoint and read the response — the identifier is not in it.

A result reports measured similarity and nothing more. It does not assert copying, theft, or wrongdoing, and the product does not phrase it that way anywhere. Two photographs of the same building will resemble each other.

It also is not proof of absence. Nothing found means nothing matched what has been registered — not that the work is unregistered elsewhere, and not that it is unencumbered.

If a result looks like your work, you can send its owner a message without either of you learning the other’s identity. The request is addressed by asset; the routing happens server-side and the message is sealed to the owner’s published key. Your own address is verified by a one-time code and is not retained in the clear.