How BambooKit works
Your sessions live on your PC. The cloud keeps a small index and relays the rest live.
The parts
| Part | Where it runs | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| BambooKit Desktop | Your Windows PC | Runs the agent on 127.0.0.1, stores sessions, executes actions you send from the phone |
| BambooKit Cloud | bambookit-api.onrender.com | Checks sign-ins, registers devices, pairs phones, keeps the session index and approvals, relays live data |
| BambooKit for Android | Your phone | The remote |
| BambooKit Web | bambookit-web.onrender.com | Install, docs, your sessions, approvals and profile, shared session links |
Where your data lives
| Data | Where |
|---|---|
| Messages, tool steps, reasoning, diffs, project files | Your PC only |
| Model API keys (including keys added from the phone, end-to-end encrypted on the way) | Your PC only |
| Session index: title, status, project name and folder, model, change counts, times | BambooKit Cloud |
| Approvals: what the agent asked (e.g. the command) and your answer | BambooKit Cloud |
| Devices: name, platform, app version, the PC's public key | BambooKit Cloud |
| Realtime events | BambooKit Cloud, 14 days |
| Session history copy (prompts, timeline, changed lines, tests) | Private cloud storage, 7 days after the PC last saved it |
| Sessions you publish with Share | BambooKit Cloud, until you unpublish |
How your phone reads a chat
Phone ── GET chat ──► Cloud ── "send me this chat" ──► PC (over the PC's own connection)
Phone ◄── chat ────── Cloud ◄── chat ───────────────── PC nothing is stored on the wayWhile a session is open, new messages, tool steps and file changes are pushed live as the agent works. If the PC does not answer within 20 seconds you see "Your PC didn't answer in time"; if it is not connected at all, "Your PC is offline". For the session history, the phone and this site then show the copy your PC saved after its last turn (kept 7 days).
How an action reaches your PC
Phone: Stop ──► Cloud stores the command ──► PC gets it instantly ──► agent stops
Phone ◄── "Stop: done on your PC" ◄── Cloud ◄── PC reports the resultA command your PC has not picked up within 5 minutes fails and is never run later.
Who can do what
The agent always runs on the PC. From the phone you can start a session in a project, chat in a session after Continue on PC (choosing the model), Stop a run, answer approvals and questions, rename and like sessions and add provider keys. This site can answer approvals and questions, rename and like sessions and ask the PC to continue a session. Each of these is a command your PC carries out, as shown above. Nobody can edit files or open a shell remotely.
Where models come from
- Free BambooKit models are built in; no key needed.
- Your own keys (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter, local models and more) are stored on your PC.
Model requests go straight from your PC to the provider. BambooKit Cloud never sees model keys or model traffic.
The hosted service on the free plan
The hosted API runs on a free plan that sleeps after about 15 minutes without traffic. It pings itself every 10 minutes and BambooKit Desktop keeps it awake while it runs; if it was asleep anyway, the first request can take up to a minute.