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Daneel AI

Offline Mode

Daneel’s Offline Mode is a user-asserted, verifiable no-network switch. When you flip it on, every outbound call that would leave your machine is blocked by design. The extension stays fully functional for everything that runs on-device or on your LAN. This page explains the rules behind what is allowed and what is denied, so the guarantee is predictable rather than mysterious.

The data-residency rule

Section titled “The data-residency rule”

Every AI provider and every tool integration in Daneel carries a PrivacyProfile describing where its data physically goes. The most important field is leavesMachine: true if a call reaches a third party, false if it stays on your device or your LAN.

Offline Mode is keyed on that single field. There is no bespoke block list. The rule is:

If a call would leave this machine, it is blocked. If it stays local, it passes through.

This is why Ollama on localhost keeps answering, why a Docker Companion MCP server on your LAN keeps working, why WebGPU inference never noticed anything changed. The same rule denies Claude, Azure OpenAI, cloud backup, and the license verification endpoint because those genuinely leave the machine.

What stays enabled

Section titled “What stays enabled”

The following keep working exactly as they do online:

  • WebGPU inference — runs in your browser, never touched the network
  • Gemini Nano — on-device Chrome AI, no outbound calls
  • Ollama on localhost or LAN — local server, local data
  • Docker Companion and MCP bridges you host yourself — same rationale
  • Vault search, chat, import, and document viewing from already-cached content
  • The knowledge graph (GLiNER entity extraction runs in a Web Worker locally)
  • Local filesystem data export and import (ZIP download, file picker)

What gets blocked

Section titled “What gets blocked”

Everything below hits a third-party host. All of it is denied with a typed error the UI knows how to recover from:

  • Claude and Azure OpenAI inference
  • Remote MCP servers (Stripe, Supabase, Vercel, public registries)
  • MCP registry search (the Official registry, PulseMCP)
  • Cloud backup via Azure Blob Storage or S3-compatible targets
  • License verification against the Daneel backend (the cached token is used)
  • Model registry refresh (the bundled catalog is used)
  • Telemetry events (dropped entirely, not buffered for later replay)
  • Wikipedia lookup from the knowledge graph node viewer
  • Loading external pages in the vault’s document viewer
  • Fetches of the news, changelog, credits, and documentation pages from the live site (the local cache serves them instead)

Several surfaces that depend on remote calls also render a disabled overlay so you do not spend time filling in credentials that cannot be used: Claude, Azure OpenAI, MCP, and Models Storage. The Models Storage panel is specifically frozen because the one thing you absolutely do not want mid-flight is an accidental delete of the cached model keeping your offline session alive.

The Data panel is split: local filesystem export and import stay enabled, Azure Blob and S3 sub-sections grey out with a short notice.

Persistent and Test modes

Section titled “Persistent and Test modes”

The switch has two forms, deliberately separate:

  • Switch to offline mode — persistent, survives browser restarts. This is the real trust feature. Flip it on, close the browser, come back tomorrow on a plane, it is still on.
  • Test offline mode — transient, active until the extension reloads. It lets you verify your offline setup without pulling the ethernet cable. The effect is identical, the duration is not.

Either one flipped on makes the effective state offline. You can have both on at once, which is equivalent to having one on.

Three escape hatches

Section titled “Three escape hatches”

The worst outcome of a trust feature is getting trapped inside it. Daneel gives you three independent ways to turn it off:

  1. The extension popup shows a prominent green OFFLINE MODE card with a one-click Turn off button whenever the mode is active. The popup is always reachable from the toolbar icon.
  2. The Vault tab (the standalone vault.html page) shows the same card at the top of the page. It works even if no webpage is loaded anywhere in Chrome.
  3. Settings > Offline mode, from the widget on any normal webpage, gives you the canonical toggles.

Wherever you find yourself, you are one click from the exit.

How the trust is verifiable

Section titled “How the trust is verifiable”

Open Chrome DevTools, switch to the service worker’s network panel, flip Offline Mode on, and use the extension normally. You will see zero requests to api.anthropic.com, to the license backend, to Google Analytics, to the docs site, to Wikipedia. Localhost (for Ollama) and the extension’s own local resources are all that move.

This is not a disclosure trick. The service worker’s proxy-fetch handler, the MCP transport, and the provider clients all consult the same gate before issuing any request. The block happens at the point of call, not at the network boundary.

Telemetry deserves a specific mention: when the gate denies a telemetry event, the event is dropped, not queued. Your actions while offline are not reported when you reconnect. The privacy expectation of the switch would be violated by any kind of replay.

Section titled “Related reading”