Why STING
The Honest Pitch
Look, there are a lot of AI tools out there. Most of them want your data on their servers. Some of them are actually good. Here’s why you might want to use STING instead.
The Elephant in the Room
Your Current Options
The typical choices when you want AI but don’t want to send everything to the cloud:
YOLO It
Send data to cloud AI and hope nothing leaks
Build It Yourself
Spend months wiring together Ollama + LangChain + ChromaDB
Don't Use AI
Fall behind while others move faster
Use STING
One install. Your servers. Actually private.
What We Built
The Problem: Traditional knowledge bases are searchable file dumps. Anyone with access sees everything.
What We Did: Honey Jars encrypt your knowledge. Bee AI searches and answers questions without exposing raw files. The knowledge is queryable, but the underlying data stays protected.
- Unlimited Honey Jars
- AES-256 encryption
- Granular access control
- Full export—your data is yours
The Problem: Most PII "protection" either permanently destroys your data or doesn't protect it at all.
What We Did: Scramble PII before the AI sees it, then reconstruct the original in the output. The AI never sees real sensitive data. Your outputs still have the information you need.
How It Works:
- PII detected before AI processing
- AI works with scrambled data
- Real data restored in output where appropriate
- Passkey required for sensitive operations
The Problem: Integrating AI with your existing files means writing custom code for every format.
What We Did: Built-in support for common document types. Throw files at it, STING handles extraction.
What We Support:
- PDFs
- Word docs (DOCX)
- Markdown
- Plain text
- More coming
The Problem: Most chatbots forget everything when you close the tab.
What We Did: Bee AI maintains conversation context. Ask follow-up questions. Reference earlier parts of the conversation. It remembers.
The Comparisons
vs. Cloud AI (ChatGPT, Claude, etc.)
| Feature | Cloud AI | STING |
|---|---|---|
| Data Location | Sent to cloud servers | Stays on your machine/server |
| Privacy | Trust the provider | You control everything |
| Offline Use | Requires internet | Fully offline after install |
| Cost | Per-token pricing | Free, forever |
| Vendor Lock-in | High | None (Apache 2.0) |
vs. DIY (Ollama + LangChain + ChromaDB)
| Feature | DIY | STING |
|---|---|---|
| Setup Time | Days to weeks | 30 minutes |
| PII Protection | Build yourself | Built-in |
| Authentication | Build yourself | WebAuthn included |
| UI | Build yourself | Desktop app + web UI |
| Maintenance | On you | Community + updates |
The Path Forward
Try Nectar
Desktop app. Download and run in minutes. See if STING works for you.
Upgrade When Ready
Hit the limits of CE? Pro unlocks unlimited Honey Jars and marketplace access.
Go Enterprise
Need SLAs, compliance, and humans who answer the phone? That's Enterprise.
Full White Glove
Enterprise Swarm: we manage everything. You just use it.