---
title: "Why coding.sh is local-first · coding.sh blog"
description: "Agent sessions hold your prompts, your code and sometimes your keys, so coding.sh keeps them on your machine unless you choose to send them."
canonical: https://coding.sh/blog/why-local-first
human_url: https://coding.sh/blog/why-local-first
markdown_url: https://coding.sh/blog/why-local-first.md
agents_url: https://coding.sh/agents.md
llms_url: https://coding.sh/llms.txt
updated: 2026-11-11
---

[Blog](https://coding.sh/blog)

Nov 7, 2026

# Why coding.sh is local-first

Agent sessions hold your prompts, your code and sometimes your keys, so coding.sh keeps them on your machine unless you choose to send them.

An agent session is a record of your work. It holds your prompts, the model's replies, every tool call with its input and output, and the files that changed. Sometimes it also holds a key that ended up in a shell command. coding.sh records all of that, so where the record lives matters.

## One folder on your machine

Everything coding.sh captures goes into `~/.coding.sh`. Set `CODING_SH_HOME` to put it somewhere else. Sessions and events go into a SQLite index, `index.db`, through Node's built-in `node:sqlite`. Large prompts and tool output go into `blobs/`, compressed with zstd.

The viewer runs from the same CLI. It binds to 127.0.0.1 and asks for the token in the URL it prints.

## Nothing is sent unless you ask

With no sinks configured, no session data leaves your machine. The one default network request is a daily update check: a GET to `api.github.com`, falling back to `registry.npmjs.org`. Set `CODING_SH_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1` or `[update] check = false` to turn it off.

The hook that agents run writes the raw payload to `~/.coding.sh/spool` with mode 600 and exits. It does no network work.

To send events somewhere else, add a sink. A sink sends metadata unless you set `mode = "full"`: ids, timestamps, kinds, durations, token counts and short labels. Prompts, code and tool output stay on your machine.

config.toml

```
# ~/.coding.sh/config.toml
[[sinks]]
kind = "otlp"                      # or "http"
endpoint = "http://localhost:4318"
mode = "metadata"                  # default; "full" sends content
```

## Secrets are redacted before they are written

Redaction runs at ingest, before anything reaches the index, the blobs or a sink. The built-in rules catch private keys, vendor API keys and tokens, JWTs, and bearer and basic auth.

Redaction keeps a secret out of the store, but the agent and its model provider still saw it. So a session that held a vendor token gets the `secret:exposed` tag, and this lists the sessions whose credentials to rotate:

shell

```
coding.sh sessions --flag secret:exposed
```

If a value got past redaction, `coding.sh purge --literal leaked.txt` replaces every stored copy with `[redacted:purged]`.

## A cloned repo cannot widen it

A `.coding.sh/config.toml` inside a repository can add redaction rules or switch capture to metadata mode. It cannot add sinks or move the store. Opening a repository you cloned does not send your sessions anywhere.

## Read more

- [Storage, sinks and privacy](https://github.com/jackulau/coding.sh/blob/main/docs/guides/privacy.md) lists everything that is captured and every setting that changes it.
- [Concepts](https://coding.sh/docs/concepts) defines the words coding.sh uses: sessions, events, flags and the rest.

[Newer post Coding agents run in your shell](https://coding.sh/blog/agents-run-in-your-shell)

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To set coding.sh up for a user, follow the agent workflow at [/agents.md](https://coding.sh/agents.md).