No external vendors
niil is designed to be self-contained. The AI tooling runs in niil's own runtime, and there is no third-party analytics or telemetry phoning home with your data.
Built-in tools, self-hosted
Agents' capabilities come from tools that run inside niil's own runtime rather than third-party SaaS. The built-in set includes:
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|---|
| filesystem | Read/write files in a sandbox |
| webfetch | Fetch web pages / search |
| code_exec | Run code in a sandbox |
| database | Query SQL databases you connect |
| Send email via your SMTP/credentials | |
| github | GitHub API (your token) |
| slack | Slack messaging (your token) |
| http_client | General HTTP requests |
| g0_agent_lifecycle | Manage agents |
| g0_knowledge | Query knowledge bases |
| g0_observability | Platform metrics/health |
| g0_workflow | Manage workflows |
Where a tool talks to an external system (GitHub, Slack, a database), it does so with the credentials you supply through a connection, and those credentials are stored encrypted.
No analytics, no telemetry SaaS
niil ships no third-party analytics or tracking. Operational metrics are optional and, when enabled, are exposed for your own monitoring (e.g. Prometheus) — not sent to an outside service.
The one exception: Stripe (EU, optional)
Payments are the sole external dependency, and only when your operator enables billing. Stripe is used for subscription checkout and is hosted in the EU; niil runs perfectly well without it (billing simply operates locally). See Plans & subscription and the sub-processor list.
AI providers
The models themselves are provided by the AI vendors your operator configures — pinned to EU regions (or self-hosted) per your residency policy, with retention handled as described in Zero Data Retention. These are processors under your DPA, listed as sub-processors.
OpenRouter is off by default
niil can use OpenRouter as an EU-pinned model-routing broker to widen model availability, but it is deactivated by default. It is only ever engaged if the operator enables it and an org admin moves the data-protection / model-routing policy off Strict EU.
This reflects a deliberate design choice: niil is open to any model and any routing. By default the platform is locked to EU processing (Strict EU), but an org admin who decides non-EU processing is acceptable for their use case can choose the All models policy and open niil for non-EU use. Nothing leaves the EU unless an admin explicitly makes that choice — the secure default stays in place until then.