Tsuba privacy
What Tsuba keeps on your Mac, what it sends over the network and when, and what it never does.
- Updated
In short: Tsuba has no account, no telemetry, no usage statistics and no crash reporting. What it records stays on your Mac. It goes online only to check the code in front of it and to keep its threat intel current, and the AI step stays off until you set it up.
What stays on your Mac
Everything Tsuba records lives in ~/.tsuba in your home folder:
- settings, including any API keys you add
- the history of every check and its evidence
- quarantined files (
~/.tsuba/quarantine) - downloaded threat intel (
~/.tsuba/intel)
None of it is uploaded anywhere. To remove everything Tsuba has stored, delete ~/.tsuba.
What leaves your Mac, and when
| What is sent | Sent to | When |
|---|---|---|
| Names and versions of a project's dependencies | OSV, the open vulnerability database | When you install or scan a project, to look the packages up in known-malicious lists |
| A package name | The npm registry | To check how new a package is and whether it runs install scripts |
| A domain name | rdap.org | To check how recently a download domain was registered |
| A file's SHA-256 hash, never the file | VirusTotal | Only if you add your own VirusTotal API key |
| Nothing about you or your code | GitHub (OpenSSF malicious packages), the VS Code marketplace list, abuse.ch (only with your own key) | Daily threat-intel downloads |
| The script or installer you were about to run | The place it came from | Tsuba fetches it to read it without running it, the same request you were about to make |
| The evidence one check needs | The AI provider you chose | Only when AI is turned on |
The AI step
AI review is optional and off until you choose a provider: Claude (through Claude Code or the Anthropic API), OpenAI, DeepSeek, Alibaba Cloud's DashScope, Google Gemini, or a model running locally. With a local model, nothing leaves your Mac.
When it is on, Tsuba sends only the evidence a single check needs: the suspicious lines, where they came from and what matched. Code comments are stripped first. Environment variable values, API keys and tokens are never included, and they are kept out of Tsuba's own logs too. That provider's own privacy policy applies to what it receives.
What Tsuba never does
- It never uploads your files or projects.
- It has no telemetry, analytics or crash reporting, so the developer can't see who uses it or how.
- It shows no ads and sells nothing.
Tsuba is open source (on GitHub, Apache 2.0), so all of the above can be checked against the code. Questions go to GitHub Issues.