self.md radar — 2026-08-14
Screenpipe used to turn a plan change into a deletion command: downgrade, and local history older than seven days could go. Its latest release stops that. Retention now stays where the person using the machine set it, unless an employer has a stated managed policy.
1. a downgrade stopped deleting the past
sources:
what happened:
Screenpipe 2.6.11 includes a change to its local-retention rules. The merged change removes retention writes from downgrade, upgrade, login, and logout flows; before it, a downgrade could force seven days of retention and delete older local data. Free users now get the same local retention controls as paid users. A managed enterprise policy still overrides a personal setting, but it has to be an explicit policy rather than a billing side effect.
the collision:
A local-first system is not really yours if the invoice can reach back and alter its memory. Screenpipe records a person’s screen and audio history, so retention is not a decorative preference buried in settings; it decides what survives long enough to become evidence, a useful recall, or something that should disappear. This patch puts a small but necessary seam between account status and local custody.
question left open:
When software keeps a private record on somebody’s own machine, which account events should be allowed to rewrite the record’s lifetime at all?
left on the table
- OpenBiliClaw promises a local content-discovery agent across many feeds, but its repository copy does not yet show a credible boundary around what “understands you” stores or sends.
- diagram-design is a welcome push against generic agent diagrams, but a library of editorial SVG patterns is still a tool drop, not a changed human operating condition.
- Needle 2 remains the clearest tiny tool-caller story, and was left out because it already carried yesterday’s fieldnote.
Related self.md routes
- Personal AI OS tools — the control-plane map for personal agents, receipts, memory, and tools
- Agent memory systems — what agents should remember, what belongs in logs, and how to avoid memory sludge
- Sandboxing and security — give agents useful power without giving them the whole house