The Chamberlain, which keeps your private papers

What the Chamberlain does#

The chamberlain looked after the lord's private chambers. The Chamberlain keeps your private papers: it reads your documents and your mail on this PC, keeps their text in an index on this PC, searches it, answers questions from it, and says what's new.

Nothing leaves this PC. Its AI runs on this PC, and it only reads: it never sends, moves or deletes your mail.

The Chamberlain comes with the Household license.

What it reads#

Every 30 minutes:

• Your documents: your Documents folder at first, wherever Windows or OneDrive keeps it, with its subfolders. A new or changed document is read; one that has gone leaves the index.
• Mail saved as files, in folders you name: .eml, Outlook's .msg, and mbox and maildir folders.
• Thunderbird's mail, when you turn it on.
• Your mail accounts, over IMAP: Gmail, Outlook.com, iCloud and any other, read-only. See Add a mail account.

Scans and photos of letters have no text to read: the Clerk reads those. Attachments are named, not read: save one into a document folder to have it read.

Search#

Type your words, over documents and mail, or either alone. Each result shows the passage with your words highlighted. A document has Show in Explorer; a message has Read, which opens it as plain text on the page.

Ask#

Ask a question in your own words: "When is the boiler service?". The Chamberlain finds the passages that answer it, numbers them and shows them, and the local AI reads only those and answers in a few sentences, citing them by number. The answer is labelled as the AI's, unverified, with the passages under it to check.

Without the local AI, you get the passages alone. See Set up the local AI.

What's new#

New lists the documents added or changed, and the mail received, since you last pressed Mark as seen. Summarize asks the local AI for two or three sentences about that list, from titles and senders only.

Documents saved twice#

The Duplicates tab lists documents saved more than once:

• Exact copies: the same file, byte for byte. One of each is picked to keep, and the rest are ticked.
• The same content: the same words and pictures in two files of the same kind. Nothing is ticked: you choose.

Recycle the ticked checks each file again, and sends it to the Recycle Bin. It never deletes outright, and never every file of a group. Keep all hides a group until one of its files changes.

Your privacy#

• Everything it keeps stays in its folder on this PC. Castellan's backups leave out the index and your mail passwords.
• Mail passwords are encrypted for your Windows account, and never shown again, logged or backed up.
• Its page answers only on this PC.
• A OneDrive file that's only online isn't read, since reading it would download it.

Its page#

The Chamberlain's page is at http://chamberlain.localhost:20303/, and Open on its card in Castellan goes there.

Its settings#

What it can't do#

• Scans, and photos of letters: no text to read.
• Older Office files (.doc, .xls, .ppt) and .odt aren't read. Exact copies of them are still found.
• Outlook's .pst file isn't read: use your mail account, or export the mail as .msg.
• Search is by your words. A document with none of them isn't found.
• Mail kept both in Thunderbird and in the same account is in the index twice.