# Zero-Retention Privacy & Silent Fail-Open Design

> How Gated avoids storing raw user messages on disk while keeping your application available with a 400ms fail-open timeout.

## No Raw Prompt Storage

Gated is designed so your customers' private messages are never saved to a database:

- **In-Memory Check Only:** User message text is checked in memory in a fraction of a millisecond and immediately discarded.
- **No Prompt Text in Databases or Logs:** Only summary counts, abuse categories, token estimates, and a one-way hash of the user ID (`user_hash`) are saved for your console charts.

## Fail-Open Reliability

A security check should never slow down or break your main application:

- **400ms Client Timeout:** The code snippet uses a 400ms timeout and lets the request proceed normally if the network cannot reach the gate.
- **Graceful Handling When Trial Limits Are Reached:** If a free Starter account uses all 250 checks, `POST /v1/check` still returns HTTP 200 with `allow: true, protection_active: false, quota_exceeded: true` so your app keeps working while your console records the unscreened traffic.