Squad on Private Repositories — Privacy & Security

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Squad runs entirely in your Copilot session. Nothing leaves your machine except what Copilot already does. Code stays local, no Squad-specific telemetry.

1. Where Squad Runs

Squad runs entirely in your Copilot session. Nothing leaves your machine except what Copilot already does.

1. Where Squad Runs

Squad is a local agent that runs in your GitHub Copilot CLI session. It doesn’t phone home. It doesn’t send data to a Squad server. It doesn’t use external APIs.

When you run:

copilot

And select Squad from the /agents list, Squad runs on your machine using Copilot’s infrastructure.

What this means:

• Your code stays local
• Squad sees what Copilot already sees (your repo, your files)
• No additional data transmission beyond Copilot’s standard operation
• No Squad-specific telemetry or tracking

2. What’s Stored in .ai-team/

Squad writes everything to .ai-team/ in your repository:

.ai-team/
├── team.md              # Roster (agent names, roles)
├── routing.md           # Work routing rules
├── decisions.md         # Architectural decisions
├── casting-state.json   # Agent names, universe theme
├── skills/              # Generic best practices (23 files)
└── agents/
    ├── neo/
    │   ├── charter.md   # Neo's role definition
    │   └── history.md   # Neo's accumulated knowledge
    ├── trinity/
    │   ├── charter.md
    │   └── history.md
    └── ...

You control what’s committed. If you don’t want agent histories in your repo, add them to .gitignore:

.ai-team/agents/*/history.md

Now histories stay local. Charters, skills, and decisions are still committed.

3. Agent Histories May Contain Project-Specific Info

Agent histories (history.md) log what agents learned during sessions:

## Session: 2025-07-15

### What I learned
- The users table has columns: id, email, created_at, role
- Auth middleware is in /server/middleware/auth.ts
- Passwords are hashed with bcrypt, salt rounds = 12

This is project-specific knowledge. If your repo is private and you want to keep it that way, review histories before sharing exports.

4. Skills Are Generic — Safe to Share

Skill files in .ai-team/skills/ are intentionally generic:

.ai-team/skills/auth-rate-limiting.md:

# Authentication Endpoints Must Be Rate-Limited

When building user-facing auth flows (login, registration, password reset,
email verification), always add rate limiting to prevent brute force attacks.

Use a token bucket or sliding window algorithm. Store counters in Redis
or an in-memory cache with TTL.

No project-specific details. No code references. No file paths.

Skills are safe to share publicly. They’re best practices, not secrets.

5. Exporting Your Squad — What’s Included

When you run:

npx github:bradygaster/squad export

The export includes:

✅ Roster (agent names, roles)
✅ Charters (agent role definitions)
✅ Skills (generic best practices)
✅ Decisions (architectural reasoning)
✅ Histories — with project-specific details removed
✅ Casting state (agent names, universe)

Squad strips project-specific info from histories during export. What remains is portable knowledge:

• “Always validate input with Zod” ✅
• “The API is at /server/routes/api.ts” ❌ (removed)

The export is safe to share with other projects or teammates, but review it first if you’re paranoid.

6. Labels and Workflows Use Standard GitHub APIs

Squad’s GitHub Actions workflows (Ralph heartbeat, auto-assign) use GitHub’s public APIs:

• Issue labeling — uses the GitHub Issues API with your repo’s auth token
• PR creation — uses the GitHub Pull Requests API
• Workflow dispatch — uses the GitHub Actions API

No third-party services. No external webhooks. Just GitHub talking to GitHub.

Your GitHub token permissions matter. If your repo is private, make sure the token used by Actions has the appropriate permissions (issues:write, pull_requests:write).

7. What Squad DOESN’T Do

❌ Send code to a Squad server
❌ Use external APIs for processing
❌ Transmit telemetry or usage data
❌ Store your team’s knowledge in a cloud service
❌ Require an account or API key (beyond your GitHub Copilot license)

Squad is entirely local. It’s a GitHub Copilot agent, not a standalone service.

8. Private Repo Checklist

If your repository is private and you’re security-conscious:

• [ ] Review .ai-team/agents/*/history.md — make sure no secrets or sensitive details are logged
• [ ] Add history.md to .gitignore if you don’t want histories committed
• [ ] Review exports before sharing — check squad-export-*.zip for project-specific details
• [ ] Audit .ai-team/decisions.md — remove any decisions that reference internal systems or secrets
• [ ] Use GitHub token permissions wisely — don’t give Actions more permissions than needed
• [ ] Skills are public-safe — feel free to share .ai-team/skills/ publicly

9. Sample Prompts for Privacy-Conscious Usage

Check what’s in histories:

> Scribe, show me what's in Neo's history. Are there any secrets
> or sensitive project details?

Clean up histories before export:

> Scribe, review all agent histories and remove any references to
> internal APIs, tokens, or database schemas before I export.

Exclude histories from Git:

> Add .ai-team/agents/*/history.md to .gitignore. I don't want
> agent histories committed.

Audit decisions:

> Show me all decisions in decisions.md. I want to check for
> anything we shouldn't share publicly.

Tips

• Squad runs in Copilot, not on a remote server. Your code stays on your machine.
• Review histories before exporting. They may contain project-specific details you don’t want to share.
• Skills are generic by design. They’re safe to share publicly.
• Use .gitignore for sensitive files. If you don’t want histories committed, exclude them.
• GitHub Actions workflows use your repo’s auth. Make sure token permissions are scoped correctly.
• No external services. Squad doesn’t phone home or send telemetry.