How to use ChatGPT-style AI on sensitive spreadsheets without uploading them

Asking an AI “which region is losing money?” is the fastest way to understand a spreadsheet. It is also what many companies forbid when the file holds customers, salaries or patients, because an online chatbot receives the data. You can keep the convenience and drop the upload.

Why sensitive files and online chatbots don’t mix

When you paste a table into an online AI chat or attach a file, it goes to the provider’s servers. Whatever their retention settings, it has left your company, and for personal, financial or health data that alone can break a contract, a policy or the law.

That is why security teams often block these tools for exactly the files people most want help with.

Run the model on your own machine instead

Smaller open models can now run inside a web browser, on your computer’s graphics chip. NoEgress downloads one once, keeps it on your device, and reads your file locally. The question, the file and the answer all stay on your computer.

Open NoEgress, drop your file, load a model from the top bar, and ask in plain English in AI Chat.

Why the numbers are exact

Chatbots are good with words and unreliable with arithmetic over thousands of rows. Here the model doesn’t add up your data itself: it writes a SQL query, the database runs it on every row, and you get the exact result along with the query that produced it, so you can check it.

-- "Which region has the highest average order value?"
SELECT region, AVG(revenue) AS avg_order
FROM orders
GROUP BY region
ORDER BY avg_order DESC;

What to expect from a local model

A model that fits in a browser is smaller than the largest online ones. It handles “total by”, “top ten”, “compare these months” and “what’s odd in this column” well, and it will sometimes need a clearer question for anything subtle.

It needs a recent browser with WebGPU, such as current Chrome or Edge, and the first download takes a while. Everything else in NoEgress, including pivots, charts and cleaning, works without the model.

Check it yourself

Open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab and ask a question. You will see the model files load the first time and no request carrying your data. You can also disconnect from the internet once the model is cached.