Code signing policy
How Modwen's installers are built and signed, and who is allowed to sign them.
Windows: free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.
Until that certificate is in place, Windows installers are unsigned and Windows SmartScreen shows a warning on first install.
What is signed
- Windows: the installer
Modwen_<version>_x64-setup.exeand the Modwen program inside it. - macOS:
Modwen.appand the.dmg, with Modwen's own self-signed identity, so macOS keeps your permissions across updates. - Updates (both systems): every update file is also signed with Modwen's update key. The installed app only accepts updates with a valid signature.
Only software built from this project's public source code is signed. Nothing from other vendors is signed under this project, apart from the open-source components the app bundles, which keep their own licences.
How a release is built
The source code is public at github.com/AbdullhRtima/modwen under the Apache-2.0 licence. The Windows installer is built from a tagged commit by the "Desktop app (Windows)" GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/desktop.yml), which also installs it and runs the app's self-test before the file is kept. The macOS app is built from the same tagged commit with desktop/scripts/build-macos.sh. The full process is in docs/releasing.md.
Team roles
| Role | Who |
|---|---|
| Committers and reviewers | AbdullhRtima (maintainer) |
| Approvers (each signing request is approved by hand) | AbdullhRtima (maintainer) |
Contributions from others are reviewed by the maintainer before they are merged.
Privacy
Modwen runs on your computer. Meeting audio, transcripts and notes are never sent to any other system: the AI that writes the notes must run on your own machine, and Modwen refuses any other address.
Modwen connects to the internet only for:
- Model downloads (speech models, the local AI model) when you press Download, from Hugging Face (speech and AI models) and GitHub (llama.cpp and the speaker-detection models).
- Setting itself up on first start: the desktop app downloads its Python packages once from the Python Package Index.
- Checking for updates on GitHub Releases. It sends only the request itself and the app version. Turn it off in Settings → General → Updates.
There is no account, no analytics and no telemetry.