This page says what Memo reads, what it writes and what can leave your computer, so you can decide what to point it at. Imports leave your sources unchanged; separate Gmail cleanup commands can move mail when you run them with --yes. Memo keeps its records on your computer and sends text to an AI provider only when you configure one and allow it.

• Note folders are only read. Hidden folders such as .obsidian are skipped. Memo writes files only when you export notes, into the folder you name, and never overwrites a file you edited.
• Mail imports open your mailbox read-only and do not mark mail as read. Memo never sends mail.
• Gmail cleanup is separate: memo mail trash and memo mail restore show a preview unless you pass --yes. Trash moves selected mail into Gmail's Trash; Gmail deletes it permanently after 30 days. Restore returns a logged run's mail while it remains in Trash. Cleanup requires a recent store backup and never runs from the sync timer. See Gmail cleanup.
• Tags leave your files, Gmail labels and mailbox flags as they are.

Your notes, links, tags, tasks, reminders, memories, facts and proposed actions are kept in the local store, a file on your computer shared with tg and max. Search by meaning uses a model that runs on your computer. Reminders go to a program on your computer that asks for them, never to a messenger or a mailbox.

When you delete a note file or an email, its text leaves the local store on the next import. If an import finds that an unusually large part of a folder or mailbox is missing at once, it deletes nothing and tells you.

• Proposed actions, and memories and facts added through the MCP server, wait for your review. Through the MCP server, an agent cannot confirm, accept, approve or reject.
• A fact, memory, relationship or proposed action added with the memo command records who wrote it. When an agent's terminal runs it (AI_AGENT or CLAUDECODE is set), the agent is the author and the fact, memory or relationship waits for you like one added through MCP. Yours is confirmed at once; in an agent's terminal, add --as-owner. --as-owner is a label, not a lock: an agent can pass it too, so tell your agent never to.
• Approving an action makes it a task for you. Memo never sends a message or an email.
• The agent log records the agent, the tool, the result and the time, never what the agent sent.
• An agent that should only read runs with MEMO_READ_ONLY=1. Every command that changes something then stops with permission_error (exit 5), and memo mcp offers only its reading tools. Reads and memo sync still run, and so do the task writes a scheduled agent makes with tasks plan and tasks link, as in tg and max: a link is only suggested, and linking two tasks is refused. reminders poll is refused.
• Two accounts are treated as one person only after you link them. A matching name or email domain is never enough.

• memo ask gives the sources to your own agent by default. It sends them to an AI provider only with --analyze, and to a provider outside your computer only with --allow-remote as well. The provider's answer is generated text: check it against the sources.
• What your agent does with the text it reads is up to that agent and its provider. Memo cannot control it. Point your agent only at the sources you are willing to share with it.
• Mail sync asks domain registries when a sender's domain was registered. It does this by itself, at most once a day, for senders you never wrote to and heard from in the last two years. memo mail inspect --domain-age asks for the groups it shows. Each question tells one registry one domain name; it is asked once and the answer is kept on your computer. Big mailbox providers such as gmail.com are never asked. There is no setting to turn this off; see how sender domains are checked.
• Once a day Memo asks npm whether a newer version exists. Turn it off with "update_check": false in the settings, or MEMO_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1. Memo never updates itself.