For work that
must not leave the building.
Lumen is an AI workspace that runs on the computer in front of you. Turn on local-only mode and the models run on your own hardware, so the material never goes anywhere. This page is who that matters to, what it changes, and which part of the product does the changing.
Nothing is wrong with the tool.
The leaving is the problem.
The review is about the data, not the feature
A security review rarely turns on what a tool can do. It turns on where the material goes, who else holds a copy, and for how long. A demo cannot answer that. Only the architecture can.
The answer is usually somebody else’s computer
A model is software, and it runs on a machine somewhere. For most tools that machine belongs to a supplier. Under privilege, patient confidentiality or an export licence, that ends the conversation on page one.
So the work goes round the block
The deadline does not move because a tool was refused. Blocking one does not stop AI arriving; it moves it onto a personal phone at eleven at night, where nobody is keeping any record of it at all.
Local-only ends that conversation
Switch it on and the sensitive work runs with no network at all. There is no transfer to assess, because nothing is transferred. The hardest question on the form stops being a question.
Eight places where this is the deciding factor
These are not markets we have carved up for the sake of a page. They are the situations where the same objection comes up first, in the same order, and where the answer is the same: the work stays on the machine.
Law firms and in-house legal
Privileged material, and a client who never agreed to a third party holding it.
Read this one →02Healthcare and clinical services
Patient information that cannot be handed to a supplier while you find out if a tool is any good.
Read this one →03Financial services and advice
Already obliged to keep a record. Reluctant to take on a second thing to explain.
Read this one →04Government and the public sector
Residency rules, long procurement, and hardware you already own sitting idle.
Read this one →05Consultancies and agencies
Every client contract says something different about where their material may go.
Read this one →06Regulated engineering
Drawings that cannot leave the country, let alone the company.
Read this one →07Companies your customers audit
The AI question is on every questionnaire now, and the honest answer is a shrug.
Read this one →08Research and IP-heavy teams
The thing that makes you worth anything is the thing you would have to upload.
Read this one →Everything you touch belongs to somebody else
Partners, associates, paralegals and in-house counsel. Contracts, disclosure bundles, advice notes and calls that are privileged from the moment they start.
“We cannot paste a client’s contract into a window we do not control, and we are not putting a recording bot into a privileged call. So the firm has no AI — and the associates use it anyway, on their own phones.”
What changes. The drafting, the summarising and the searching happen on the machine on the desk. In local-only mode there is no network call at all, so no third party ever holds the material. Meetings are captured from your own computer rather than by something that joins the call, so the participant list is the people who were invited.
Models run on your own hardware with the network off. Client material is not sent anywhere to be read.
Recording happens on the machine. Nothing appears in the participant list and no copy is sent out of the room.
An agent reads only the collection you hand it. Give it one matter and it cannot reach another.
Anything that reaches a client is a gated action. The agent prepares it and waits for a person to release it.
What was worked on, against which matter, compiled as it happened rather than reconstructed on Friday.
You cannot trial a tool on patient data
Clinics, hospital departments, private practice, allied health and the administrative teams around them. Referrals, notes, letters and consultations.
“Every tool we look at wants to process patient information on somebody else’s servers. Working out whether that is allowed takes months. By then the clinicians have given up asking.”
What changes. Nothing has to go anywhere for the tool to be useful. Transcription, summarising and search all run on hardware in the building, and the index sits on the device. That turns a long assessment into a short one, because there is no transfer to assess. It does not decide for you whether a consultation may be recorded — that is still your call, and consent still matters.
Transcription and summarising run on your own hardware. Nothing is sent to a supplier to be processed.
Captured from the machine, with what was decided separated from what was merely discussed.
A collection is a list you can read. An agent cannot reach a record you have not put in front of it.
The written record of the day stays where it was made, and you can export the whole thing at any point.
You already keep a record. This one keeps itself
Advisers, brokers, wealth managers, insurers and the compliance people behind them. Supervised firms with duties around client conversations and suitability.
“We are already obliged to record what we tell clients. An AI tool means a second thing to record, a second thing to supervise, and a second thing to explain when somebody asks.”
What changes. The record is a by-product of the work rather than a second job. Meetings are written up as they happen. Answers come back with the meeting, entry or file they were drawn from, down to the page, so a reviewer can check the working instead of taking it on trust. Client files can be held to models on your own hardware while general work uses a hosted model on your own account.
Client conversations and the work around them compiled from what actually took place, not from memory.
Reviews captured and summarised, with the dates, the risks and the owner of each action attached.
Every reply names the file or meeting it came from, so the working can be checked rather than believed.
Client material can be held to models on hardware you own while everyday work uses hosted models on your own keys.
Mesh lines the record up against the clauses you already report on. Mapped is not certified, and we do not say otherwise.
The hardware is already yours. Use it
Departments, councils, agencies and arms-length bodies. Casework, correspondence, submissions and the meetings that produce all three.
“Procurement takes a year. The data cannot go abroad. And nearly everything on the market turns out to be a login to somebody else’s cloud with our name on the invoice.”
What changes. Lumen installs on machines the organisation already owns and runs models on them. There is no account with us holding the material, and no model spend routed through us — if you use a hosted model it is your own provider account. Because it is free on one computer, a team can find out whether it earns its place before anyone writes a business case for it.
Local-only mode uses hardware you own. It is useful on a machine that is not connected to anything.
Hosted models run on your accounts under your contracts. Keys are never proxied through us.
A shared building does not have to mean shared reach. Each agent gets one collection and nothing else.
What was asked, what was read and what came back — yours to take out whenever you like.
Mesh is being built so the same rule reaches every machine, rather than living in each person’s settings.
Eleven clients, eleven different confidentiality clauses
Management consultancies, engineering and technical consultancies, design studios, research agencies and anyone else whose day is spent inside other people’s data rooms.
“Each client’s contract says something different about where their material may go. Nobody can hold eleven sets of rules in their head at four on a Thursday afternoon.”
What changes. The boundary stops being something people have to remember. One collection per client means an agent working on one engagement cannot read another client’s files — not as a matter of good behaviour, but because those files are not in front of it. For the clients whose contract says the material stays put, turn the network off entirely and it does.
The set of files an agent may read is the permission. Hand over one client’s work and that is its whole world.
For engagements whose terms forbid transfer, the sensitive work runs with no network at all.
Deliverables are drafted and held. An agent stops before anything reaches a client inbox.
Written as the day goes, so the answer exists before a client asks the question.
Some of this cannot leave the country
Defence and aerospace suppliers, medical device makers, energy and safety-critical software teams. Controlled drawings, design history files, test records and the reasoning behind each change.
“Half our drawings cannot leave the country, never mind the company. Anything that phones home is a non-starter before we have even looked at what it does.”
What changes. The workspace is genuinely useful on a machine that has never been connected. Files are indexed on the device, models run on hardware you own, and screen capture you can replay means the path to a design decision is still there when someone asks about it two years later. Agents stop before anything is sent, published or ordered.
Local-only mode is the whole point here. Nothing is sent, so there is nothing to control the export of.
Drawings, specifications and test records searchable locally, inside collections you define.
The route to a decision is kept, not just its outcome. Useful long after everyone has forgotten the detail.
An agent drafts the change note or the order. A person releases it. Always in that order.
The AI question is on every questionnaire now
Suppliers to banks, hospitals, governments and large enterprises. Software vendors, outsourcers, payroll and logistics firms — anyone whose sales cycle includes a security review they did not write.
“Every large customer now asks which AI tools we use and what they do with their data. We do not actually know, so we answer carefully and hope nobody follows up.”
What changes. The answer becomes a list instead of a shrug. Each request writes down who asked, what was read, which model answered and where that model ran. When a customer asks what could reach their material, you can show them the collection rather than describe your intentions.
What was asked, what was read and what came back. Nobody sits down to compile it afterwards.
You can point at the exact set of files that was reachable, rather than describing a policy.
Mesh is being built so that is one rule across the estate, not a preference each person finds in their own settings.
Entries line up against the clauses customers ask about. Niello is not certified against those frameworks, and the record says so.
The valuable part is the part you would have to upload
Research groups, pre-patent work, unreleased roadmaps, proprietary source and datasets nobody else has. Small teams and large ones, in and out of universities.
“The only thing that makes us worth anything is the work nobody has seen yet. To get any use out of these tools we would have to hand exactly that over.”
What changes. The material stays on the machine and the model comes to it. In local-only mode nothing leaves, so there is nothing for anyone else to keep, study or train on. If you do choose a hosted model for some work, it runs on your own provider account under your own contract with them — we do not sit in the middle and we never proxy your keys.
Local-only mode runs the model on your hardware. Nothing leaves, so nothing can be retained elsewhere.
Where you do use a hosted model, the contract and the terms are yours. We are not in that relationship.
Source, datasets and unpublished drafts searchable on the device, handed out one collection at a time.
How a question became an answer, written as it happened — which is the part that is usually lost.
What an afternoon looks like
Invented, on purpose. It is here to show the shape of the thing rather than to persuade you that somebody else already loves it.
A four-person consultancy, mid-engagement
Two clients in the same week. One of them is a bank whose contract says its material may not be processed by a third party. The other is a manufacturer who does not much mind.
There is no security team here, and no appetite for a rollout. One person installs Lumen on a laptop on the Tuesday.
By Thursday the calls are written up, the bank’s files sit in a collection of their own, and local-only is switched on for anything with the bank’s name on it. Nobody had to be trusted to remember which client was which.
- ✓Tuesday. Installed on one machine. Free, no card, nobody else involved.
- ✓Wednesday. Two client calls captured from the laptop. Nothing joined either call.
- ✓Wednesday evening. The bank’s documents go into their own collection. The manufacturer’s go into another.
- ✓Thursday. Local-only on for the bank’s work. The summary of a public tender still goes to a hosted model.
- ✓Friday. The week reads back as a written record, with each answer naming the file it came from.
Every detail above is made up. No firm, figure or outcome on this page describes a real customer, because we do not yet have one we can name.
What this page is not claiming
Everything above is written for people who will be asked to defend it internally. So here are the limits, in the same place, rather than scattered in small print.
If any line here changes, this page changes with it.
Bring the material you are not allowed to upload.
A contract, a recording and the rule you would like enforced. Switch the network off and see what still works.