AI and Privacy

AI and Privacy

GlucoPilot's AI features — the Companion, cross-domain Overview, pattern/insight narratives, lab-report reading, and the Visit Report — run through a provider you choose on Settings → AI. Three options, all first-class:

Cloud (no GPU needed)

The simplest path — paste an API key and you're done.

• Anthropic (Claude) — key from console.anthropic.com.
• OpenAI — key from platform.openai.com. Use a vision model (e.g. gpt-4o or gpt-4o-mini) so lab-report reading works.

With a cloud provider, your computed summaries and any uploaded lab images are sent to that provider under their terms. This is the right choice for most people who don't have a local GPU.

Local (fully private)

Run an OpenAI-compatible server (vLLM, Ollama, LM Studio, llama.cpp) on your own machine. No health data leaves your server. Two roles:

Role	Used for	Requirement
Default model	lab extraction + everyday text	must be vision-capable
Report model (optional)	Visit Report narrative only	text; larger = better prose

The report model is loaded on demand and unloaded when idle (e.g. via Ollama's keep-alive), so a big model doesn't hold GPU memory the rest of the time. Full setup — including reaching a host model from the container and graceful loading — is in docs/LOCAL_MODELS.md.

What data goes where

• Lab-report images are stored on your server. They're sent to the AI provider only for extraction — with a local vision model, they never leave.
• Narratives (patterns, insights, report) send computed summaries (numbers), not raw records.
• Nothing is sent anywhere unless you've selected a provider and triggered a feature. With no key configured, the app still works — those AI features just stay idle.

Tip

For a privacy-first setup that still gets a great report: run a local vision model for day-to-day and lab extraction, and either a larger local model or a cloud key just for the occasional Visit Report.