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Incognito chat

Incognito mode suspends all persistence for a single conversation — nothing about your prompts or Strata's replies is saved to your history.

Turning incognito on

  1. Start from a fresh chat (the empty-state screen with the greeting).
  2. Click the Incognito button in the top bar of that empty-chat screen (eye-with-slash icon, at the right end of the bar above the greeting).

The chat surface changes immediately:

  • The greeting changes to "You're incognito."
  • A thin Incognito Mode banner appears around the page with a close (x) button.
  • An incognito disclaimer line appears below the composer: "Incognito mode is active. This conversation will not be saved to your history."

You stay in incognito until you click the close (x) on the banner, which exits incognito and starts a fresh persistent chat.

What is NOT saved while incognito is on

  • The conversation itself — no entry appears in your past-chats sidebar.
  • Your messages and Strata's replies — neither is written to the platform database.
  • AI output of any kind — even if your account otherwise has "Save AI responses" turned on in Settings > Privacy, incognito overrides it.
  • Memory updates — Strata does not add to either your personal or your connection memory while incognito.
  • Voice transcripts — if you start voice mode while incognito, the voice session is not saved when you end it.

When you start a voice session while incognito, Strata also does not inject prior text-chat history into the voice context — voice opens with no memory of earlier text messages from the same session.

What still happens

  • Live AI requests run normally. Strata still sends your prompts to the AI model, generates a reply, and streams it back to you.
  • Token usage is recorded. The cost of the request still counts toward your quota and rolls up to your organization's Usage dashboard, but only as aggregate spend — message content is not stored. See /docs/admin/usage.
  • Memory is read but not written. If you have prior memory entries, the AI still uses them; new ones are not added.
  • Extensions still work. You can still run SQL queries, read OneDrive files, send emails — the AI continues to use connected tools.

Exiting incognito

Click the close (x) on the Incognito Mode banner. The frame disappears, the current incognito conversation is discarded, and a new persistent chat starts. There is no "save this conversation as a regular chat" option — once you exit, the transcript is gone.

The close (x) on the banner is the way out of incognito. While incognito is active the sidebar is hidden, so the only exit is the banner's close button.

When NOT to use incognito

  • You will want to refer to the chat later. Incognito's whole point is that it leaves no trace. Use a regular chat (then star it) if the answer matters beyond this session.
  • You want memory to learn from this conversation. Incognito skips all memory writes.
  • You are running an agent or scheduled task. Agents are separate from your chat and not affected by incognito at all.

Incognito vs. the Privacy settings

Incognito is a one-click, per-conversation switch. Settings → Privacy has two persistent toggles that change what is saved across all of your chats:

  • Save AI responses to history — when off, no conversation you have is written to history, exactly as if every chat were incognito. Incognito forces this behavior for a single chat regardless of how the toggle is set.
  • Save responses containing extension data — when off, any conversation that uses a connected extension (SQL, OneDrive, Outlook) is blanked and disappears on reload, even if "Save AI responses" is on.

In all of these cases — incognito, either toggle off — token usage is still recorded. Either toggle may be locked by your administrator at the organization level. See /docs/settings.

Privacy posture

Incognito is a per-conversation privacy control for your own history. It is not a workaround for organizational policies — your admin can still see aggregate token usage, and connected extensions still log their own activity (for example, sent emails still appear in your Outlook Sent Items). For broader privacy guidance, see /docs/security/data.

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