Privacy

Last updated 17 July 2026 · Plain-language summary of what Manta UI stores where, who can read it, and how to delete it.

Manta UI is a thin client. The interesting data lives on your Linux box; the push gateway only sees the parts that have to cross our infrastructure to deliver a native APNs push.

What runs where

Manta UI is three surfaces:

• The desktop app (Electron) and the phone client (native iPhone app, or any browser) are thin clients — chat, terminal, and file browser over HTTPS.
• The server runs on your own Linux box. It owns your tmux sessions, your opencode chat sessions, your file uploads, your schedules, your secrets, your webhooks, and your notifications. Everything lives under ~/.manta/ on that box.
• The push gateway (gateway.mantaui.com) is the ONLY thing we still operate. It holds the Apple APNs key (which structurally cannot live on your box) and fans out native pushes on your box's behalf. Devices connect directly to your box at https://<box_id>.boxes.mantaui.com — there is no relay in the path for chat, terminal, or file traffic.

What's on your box

• Box identity — a random box_id (32 hex chars), a box_token (HMAC key), and a gateway_token (bearer credential for the push gateway) under ~/.manta/auth.json (0600). The token never leaves the box.
• Pairing codes — short-lived (5 min), loopback-only, one-time. Mints when you run npm run pair or hit GET /auth/pair from the box itself.
• Device tokens — issued to each paired desktop / phone. Stored locally in each app's config.json; the box keeps no per-device record beyond "is this token currently valid."
• Your work — every tmux session, every opencode chat, every uploaded file (~/.manta-uploads/, hourly auto-clean), every scheduled prompt, every webhook, every secret, every published page.

Delete any of this by deleting the file. The installer's only hard rule is: never regenerate ~/.manta/auth.json — that would unpair every device.

What's on the push gateway

The push gateway holds the minimum it needs to deliver native APNs notifications. It does not see your chat, terminal, or file traffic at all — that flows directly between device and box over HTTPS.

• Box row — box_id, gateway_token (HMAC-bearer), first-seen IP, last-seen IP, registered public hostname (<box_id>.boxes.mantaui.com), first/last-registered timestamps.
• OVH DNS record id — so we can update the per-box A record on re-registration (IP changed) without searching.
• APNs device tokens — stored on the box, not the gateway. The gateway is stateless about which devices exist — the box owns its token store and the gateway just fans out the pushes the box asks for, reporting back which tokens to prune.
• The Apple APNs key (.p8) — the single piece of state that structurally cannot live on your box. Stays in /etc/manta-gateway/ on the prod box.

Retention: the box row stays until your box unregisters (it can't — the gateway doesn't expose unregister). To wipe: SSH into the prod gateway host and remove the row from /var/lib/manta-gateway/boxes.json. We never store anything about you beyond what's needed to fan out APNs deliveries.

What crosses the wire

• Device → box: chat prompts, terminal keystrokes, file uploads. Direct HTTPS to https://<box_id>.boxes.mantaui.com. Authenticated with your device token; the box checks HMAC + expiry on every request.
• Box → push gateway: native push payloads, sent over HTTPS to https://gateway.mantaui.com/push with a Bearer <gateway_token> header. The gateway signs the APNs JWT and forwards; the payload body (title, body, deep link) is opaque to the gateway.
• Push gateway → APNs: standard HTTPS to api.push.apple.com, signed with the gateway's APNs key. Apple sees the push envelope.

Push notifications

When you have the phone client open in the background (or installed as a native app later), Manta may send a push when an agent needs you — a permission prompt, a question, an error, or a long-running task finishing. The push body carries the session name and a short snippet of the question. We do not include the full transcript in the push body.

Cookies and analytics on this site

This website (the one you're reading right now) does not set cookies, does not run analytics, does not embed trackers, and does not fingerprint your browser. The only outbound requests are to Google Fonts for typography.

Third parties we use

• Google Fonts — typography CSS, loaded from fonts.googleapis.com. Google sees your IP. If you want to avoid that, the page degrades gracefully to system fonts.
• Apple Push Notification service (APNs) — for native push on the iOS app. Apple sees the push envelope and your IP.
• OVH DNS API — the gateway uses our OVH account to manage the boxes.mantaui.com A records. OVH sees the box's public IP at registration time.

Open source

Manta UI is open source. The server, push gateway, mobile web client, and desktop app are all on GitHub. The only closed-source piece is the published iOS app (which exists only because the stores require it).

Your choices

• Run the server yourself. Every user runs their own server on their own hardware. Chat, terminal, and file traffic never crosses our infrastructure — only native APNs pushes do, and only because Apple's key model makes that structurally necessary.
• Use the push gateway. When the iOS app is open in the background, native pushes fan out through gateway.mantaui.com. Web Push (VAPID, for browser installs) stays box-local and does NOT touch the gateway.
• Delete your data. Uninstalling the desktop or phone app removes its local config. Wiping ~/.manta/ on the box removes identity + work. Asking us to forget a box drops the gateway row.

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Contact

Questions, deletion requests, or reports: antoine@mantaui.com.

Manta UI is open source; the canonical implementation of everything described here lives in the README and server source.