Privacy Budget

PiSovereign uses a formal ε-privacy budget to give you full transparency and control over how your data is processed. Every operation that touches your personal data costs a small amount of privacy budget — and you can see exactly where it goes.

What Is ε (Epsilon)?

Epsilon (ε) is a number from differential privacy research that measures how much information an operation reveals about your data. A smaller ε means more privacy; a larger ε means less.

Your daily budget: ε = 1.0 (default), which allows roughly 1,000 typical operations per day
Budget resets: Every day at midnight (local time)

Think of it like a daily data allowance — each AI operation uses a tiny bit, and you can always see how much is left.

On the Sovereignty page, you’ll find a circular progress indicator showing your privacy budget status:

Status Colors

Color	Status	Meaning
🟢 Green	Healthy	Less than 50% consumed — normal operation
🟡 Yellow	Warning	50–90% consumed — approaching limit
🔴 Red	Exhausted	Over 90% consumed — degraded mode active

What Each Operation Costs

Operation	Typical ε Cost	Example
Creating a memory embedding	0.001	Storing a conversation summary
Semantic search query	0.001	Finding relevant memories for context
Federated sync (per peer)	0.01	Sharing LoRA weights with a trusted peer
Knowledge graph update	0.001	Adding a connection between memories

The dashboard also shows a breakdown of which operations consumed the most budget today.

What Happens When the Budget Is Exhausted

When your daily budget runs out, PiSovereign does not stop working. Instead, it degrades gracefully:

First: New embedding operations pause — memories are still stored as text, but won’t be vectorized until tomorrow
Second: Semantic search falls back to keyword-based full-text search (still works, slightly less accurate)
Third: Federated sync is paused until budget resets

Your conversations continue normally. The AI can still respond, access cached memories, and use all tools. Only new privacy-consuming operations are paused.

Adjusting Your Budget

You can change your daily budget in config.toml:

[privacy_budget]
enabled = true           # Set to false to disable budget tracking entirely
daily_epsilon = 1.0      # Daily budget (higher = more operations allowed)
embedding_cost = 0.001   # Cost per embedding operation
warn_threshold = 0.5     # Show warning at this consumption level (0.0–1.0)
exhaust_threshold = 0.9  # Enter degraded mode at this level (0.0–1.0)

Recommendations

Default (1.0): Good balance for typical usage
Lower (0.5): Maximum privacy — suitable if you want minimal data processing
Higher (2.0): More headroom — suitable for heavy usage with many integrations active
Disabled: Set enabled = false if you don’t want budget tracking (all operations proceed without accounting)

Why This Matters

Most AI assistants process your data with no visibility into what’s happening. PiSovereign’s privacy budget gives you:

Transparency: See exactly which operations consume privacy budget
Control: Set your own limits based on your comfort level
Accountability: Historical logs of all privacy-consuming operations
Compliance: Formal ε-accounting for GDPR and similar regulations

PiSovereign Documentation