Glossary
What is zero retention?
Zero retention is a guarantee that raw prompts and responses are never persisted — only structural counters are kept.
Definition
Zero retention is a guarantee that raw prompts and responses are never persisted — only structural counters are kept.
Definition
Zero retention — short definition
Why it matters
Why this matters
Most data-exposure incidents around LLMs are storage incidents — logs, traces or backups containing prompt bodies. Zero retention eliminates that class of risk by design.
Most data-exposure incidents around LLMs are storage incidents — logs, traces or backups containing prompt bodies. Zero retention eliminates that class of risk by design.
How it works
How it works
Framework
Zero retention process
- 01
In-memory only
Prompts and responses live in the request lifecycle, not in durable storage.
- 02
Structural metrics
Token counts, latencies and masked entity types are captured instead of bodies.
- 03
Auditable pipeline
The observability sink rejects any payload that includes raw bodies.
Implementation
Learn how this works in Privian
From definition to implementation, docs and architecture — the same idea at different layers.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
- What is actually stored?
- Structural data only: token counts, latency, model identifiers, masked entity types. No prompt or response bodies.
- Does zero retention apply to the provider too?
- It applies to Privian. Whether the provider retains data depends on their terms and your account configuration with them.
- How is zero retention verified?
- By auditing the storage layer and the observability pipeline. The gateway has no code path that writes prompt or response bodies to durable storage.
Where to go next
From definition to implementation
This entry is part of the Privian content library. If you are evaluating how this concept is implemented in practice, the links below are the most direct paths.
Related product
Privian LLM Gateway
A privacy-first gateway that keeps no raw prompts or responses — structural counters only.
Open product page →