Local-first interview AI: what on-device actually means
Everyone says private now. Here is the concrete difference between processing on your machine and processing on someone else's.
Private has become the most abused word in AI marketing. Almost every tool says it, and almost none of them mean what you think. So let me be concrete about what local-first means, because it is the whole reason SideSense exists and it is easy to check once you know what to look for.
The real question: whose computer runs the model?
When you talk to a cloud AI tool, your microphone audio and your transcript are sent over the network to a server you do not control, processed there, and sent back. Private, in that world, means they promise to be careful with data that already left your machine. You are trusting a policy.
Local-first means the processing happens on your computer. The audio is captured, transcribed, and reasoned over on the same device you are sitting at. For the parts that run on-device, nothing is uploaded, because there is nowhere to upload it. You are trusting physics, not a policy.
What that changes for an interview tool
An interview copilot sees unusually sensitive stuff: your voice, the questions a company asks, your resume, the answers you fumble. That is exactly the material you least want sitting in a third-party log. Running it locally means your resume and your recordings stay on your disk.
It also means it works without a good connection, it does not meter you per minute, and there is no shared server to breach. You cannot leak a database that does not exist.
How to check any tool's claim
You do not have to take anyone's word, including mine. Ask three questions. Can it run with the network off? If yes, the core is genuinely local. Where does the model run, on your device or their server? If it is their server, it is cloud with a privacy policy, not local. And can you point it at your own local model or your own key? If yes, you are in control of where inference happens.
SideSense answers those the way I would want as a user: it runs on your machine, offline with Ollama or with a key you own, and your data does not leave unless you choose a hosted model on purpose.
Practice like it's real. Perform like a pro.
SideSense is a local-first AI interview copilot. Free while in early access.