Answer
Out of the box, wavecat runs entirely on the models bundled with it — all on your own machine. It should just work.
For advanced setups, there’s an optional (in development) path to route the heavier interactive work to a model server you provide. The rest of the local pipeline keeps running on-device exactly as before; you’re only pointing the most demanding tasks at infrastructure you control.
Hopefully this will be useful for users with local Mac Studio or DGX Spark servers, where they can run more powerful models and connect them securely and privately with wavecat. Still no cloud. The on-device pipeline that watches your screen and builds context stays local either way. I’ll perhaps work on improving that too, so that you can run wavecat on even less powerful laptops.
So the short answer is yes, but you almost certainly don’t have to. The default is designed to be great on its own, and your data stays private throughout.