The Villages app

For Mac. Private to you. Works with the AI assistant you already use.

Villages maps your real network: who you know, how close you actually are, who can get you to anyone. Then it does something no address book does. While you are working on a real problem, it notices when you already know someone who has been through it, taps you on the shoulder, and drafts the message in your voice. Everything is gathered on your own Mac; only a distilled summary of who you know ever reaches your private store, and nobody else can see it, including us.

What it connects to

You choose the sources. WhatsApp and iMessage on your Mac, your LinkedIn connections, your Google account (Gmail and Calendar), and a call recorder if you use one. Each source adds a layer to the same private map: who you talk to, how often, what people are working on and need.

How it uses your Google account

When you click Connect Google, the app asks for read-only access to your Gmail message metadata and to your calendar. It uses the Gmail permission only to read the From, To, Cc and Date headers of your own messages, on your Mac, to count how often you correspond with each person. It never reads message bodies (the permission does not allow it) and does not use subject lines. From your calendar it uses only attendees and start times, to count how often you meet each person; event titles are not used.

What leaves your Mac, per person you correspond or meet with: their name, a one-way hash of their email address (not the address itself), their organisation's domain where it is a work domain, and monthly counts of emails and meetings. Your Google sign-in token is stored only on your Mac, in the system keychain. You can disconnect in the app or revoke access from your Google account at any time.

Villages' use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. Google user data is used only to provide the features described here, is never used for advertising, is never sold, is never used to train AI models, and is never read by a human except with your explicit permission, for security purposes, or where required by law.

What it never does

It never uploads message text, phone numbers or email addresses. It never sells data or shows advertising. It never trains AI models on your data. It never combines what different users know about the same person. Anything intimate about someone else is dropped by rule, and anything tender about you is kept only on the terms you set in the app.

The full detail is in the privacy policy. Questions: aj@villages.work.